By John Leggett | The Courier-Herald

This year’s Sumner High girls basketball squad may go only as far as the junior class carries it, as nine junior girls provide the core of the varsity unit.

The Spartan girls are coming off a disappointing 5-15 season.

“I’ve been coaching for almost 25 years and in discussing last year’s misery, I’ve never seen one squad play with so many negative factors going against its success,” coach Robert Thayer said. “We had suspensions, injuries and a number of other issues that didn’t work in our favor.”

But Sumner’s ladies appear to have the weapons needed to fly under the radar and end up in the postseason picture.

As the only senior in the varsity group, Jordan Swarthout offers her veteran leadership and competitive persona and should be an excellent rebounder.

Junior point guard Angie Wagar-Sanchez could be the difference maker on this crew as she will be pushing the ball down the floor. Like Wagar-Sanchez, the Spartans will put a lot of athletic ability on the floor as names stick out from other sports in Swarthout (soccer), Dani Babcock (fastpitch) as well as Kaitlin King, Tyeanne Lubking, Kendell Theden and Reagan Wright, who represented most of the supporting cast for Wagar-Sanchez last season.

“We lost about half of our starters to graduation, but we played a lot of basketball together this summer so we’re hoping that will be enough to make up some the ground that we lost to graduation,” Thayer said.