Led by Kennedy Bockert’s 27 points, the Woodland Beavers girls basketball squad rolled past R.A. Long High School with a 66-34 win on Wednesday, Jan. 8.
Last week, the Beavers also beat the Washougal Panthers 66-38 on Monday, Jan. 6, and the Hudson’s Bay Eagles 68-2 on Friday, Jan. 10. Heading into this week, Woodland sat at 6-0 in league, tied with the Columbia River Rapids, who the Beavers faced off against on Tuesday, Jan. 14, but results were unavailable.
In the previous season, the Beavers ended league play at 8-9, but this year feels different, said assistant coach Jason Bunger, who was filling in for head coach Glen Flanagan, out sick for the game on Jan. 8.
“They were pretty young last year,” Bunger said. “I think we lost three or four seniors, but they’re just a good group. The young kids mixed right in with the older girls. They love to work hard. They all kind of want the same goal.”
The Beavers are led by sophomore Kennedy Bockert in the paint. Bockert consistently out-rebounds her opponents and scores above the opposing players.
After the 66-34 win over the R.A. Long Lumberjills, Bockert said getting to the rim and good passes from her teammates were the keys to success, which has been the emphasis all season.
After five league games and five wins, Bockert said her goal is to reach the state tournament with this Beaver squad.
“I’m hoping to win league champs, and I would like to try and get as far as we can in the postseason,” she said. “I’m just trying to get better every year and yeah, I would like to be the league champs and go far in state. Those are my goals.”
Bunger said that it may look pretty obvious that the gameplan is to get the ball to the 6-foot-tall Bockert.
“If we can get it to her, we want to get it to her,” he said. “She does so many good things obviously on both ends of the floor. So yeah, she’s a nice asset to have.”
If the offense inside the paint is jammed, the Beavers have emphasized becoming better shooters in the off season, Bunger said. The Beavers’ outer-perimeter offense has played inconsistently with cold stretches and hot streaks.
“It’s off-season work for the kids that were putting up those 3s,” Bunger said. “We don’t shy away from it. I mean, if you’re open, we want our shooters to shoot, right? You can’t make them if you don’t shoot them. But as you can see … we’re on a flow when it comes to that. We started a little slow and then we started hitting them in the second half, but it’s kind of what we expect.”