Heading into the 2024-25 season the Powell Panther girls’ basketball team will be looking to shift gears, moving towards a faster, guard oriented offense after the loss of a two-time All-State center and key pieces of their rotation from a year ago.

“We’re not quite as big this year,” coach Chelsea Kistler said. “We still have Saige [Kidd] and Catelynn [Floy] on the inside, they’re both very strong and athletic, but we just miss that height.”

Those two posts will feature as the bigs for the Panthers this year, while the remainder of the lineup will feature a host of guards.

Alongside those two senior posts will be Alexa Richardson, with all three of the seniors playing varsity minutes since they were freshmen as Kistler expects them to lead the team this year.

“I am probably going to be a little bit harder on them this year. My expectations for them are going to be higher than they have been in the past,” Kistler said. “They do need to lead this team this year, and they need to set the tone of how we do things and be able to handle the expectations that I’m going to be laying on them.”

Behind them will be juniors Coy Erickson and Ivy Agee who received minutes a season ago on varsity, returning as some of the top 3-point options for the team.

“I’d like for both of them to shoot the ball from the outside when they’re open and when they’re in rhythm,” Kistler said. “Being able to read the situations and you know, teams can’t take away both. Shooting outside when they’re open and taking them to the rim whenever they come flying out at them, that’s part of it.”

The final player returning with varsity experience from a year ago is sophomore Emery Hernandez, who played a key role off the bench as a spark for the Panthers after the new year.

“The way she plays I kind of forget that she’s an incoming sophomore,” Kistler said. “She’ll sometimes make some of those young mistakes and she’s obviously still got a lot to learn, but she does play kind of beyond her years and we’re working on her in the same aspect as Coy. Being able to get to the rim but also, we expect teams to want to sit back off her because she’s got a really quick first step, and she knows she’s going to have to start making them respect her from the outside. She’s been working on that.”

Behind those returners the Panthers will bring some more players up who played significant junior varsity roles last season, including junior posts Shelby Zickefoose and Hali Hancock along with sophomore post Leah Graham.

“We’re still working on the physicality with them there,” Kistler said. “Shelby has a great shot … Hali is just so long and lanky, that’s the one who gave Addy [Thorington] some problems in practice … Leah, she’s just a sophomore too. But she’s a bulldog, she plays hard and she just needs to see and understand what we see in her and have that confidence in herself.”

Along with those moving up from last season the Panthers will add another transfer guard into the mix, as sophomore Ava Teten is expected to play a role in the Panther program after moving to Powell from Buffalo.

“That was a steal. I am tickled to have her as part of our team and to become a Panther,” Kistler said. “She brings great ball handling and some shooting to her game … She sees the floor very well and she puts some heat behind that pass. You better have your hands up and ready, if you’re open, she’s gonna get you the ball. She’s a really good passer, but she asks questions. She understands the game. She wants to know more.”

With a lineup that features primarily guards the Panthers will be shifting into a quicker offense this season, with Kistler believing what the team lacks in overall size it will make up for in pace.

“What we lack in size we gain in quickness,” Kistler said. “So while we’ll be mismatched in that area, the other teams are going to have to figure out how to match us as well in our speed because they’re going to have to put some of their bigs on our guards. And my guards aren’t just guards, they’re fast guards, and some of the fastest I believe to be in our class.”

She said that with that pace of play the Panthers are going to have to learn how to limit mistakes, and how to box out in order to secure more rebounds.

The first weekend of the season will be on the road, kicking off against Pinedale at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday in Lander as part of its invitational.

“Pinedale, they’ve got all their important puzzle pieces back that they had last year and they saw a lot of success,” Kistler said. “They could have very easily been in the championship game last year. We respect that team. We know who they’ve got and what they’ve got to offer.”

On Friday the Panthers will take on Rawlins at 8:30 a.m. before finishing the weekend at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday against host Lander.

The Panthers are again aiming to be one of the four teams from the 3A West to make the state tournament, battling against another tough contingent of teams in Pinedale, Mountain View, Lander and Cody, which dropped down a classification this season. Douglas, Buffalo and Wheatland are expected to be tough competitors out of the east.