Deer Lakes girls basketball chases elusive WPIAL playoff win

By: HSSN Staff
Thursday, November 22, 2018 | 9:15 PM

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Victoria Keibler isn’t telepathic, but she still can sense what some of her Deer Lakes basketball teammates will do on the floor during games.

“We know each other,” the senior guard explained at a recent practice. “We know what we’re going to do before we even do it.”

That kind of foresight comes with a decade playing together. Can the Lancers finish each other’s sentences? Maybe, maybe not — but the team’s four seniors have plenty of basketball chemistry.

“I’ve been playing with some of these girls since second grade, and even the younger girls we’ve been playing with for years just because that’s kind of the way our program’s set up,” senior Anna Solomon said. “We bring our younger girls up a lot. So I think we’re comfortable with each other. We’ve got some great chemistry this year, and I’m confident that we’re going to be pretty good.”

Seniors Abby Buechel, Julia Hollibaugh, Keibler and Solomon have multiple years of varsity experience together. Keibler’s and Solomon’s connection to the program goes back even further, to when they were in middle school and Deer Lakes coach Dave Petruska was an assistant on the staff of his mother, Dana.

Over the past three years the seniors were a part of three WPIAL playoff qualifiers, but the Lancers are hoping for a deeper run this spring after back-to-back-to-back first-round exits.

“Every year we’ve gotten closer,” Solomon said. “I know my freshman year, we pretty much got blown out. But last year was a very close game. I think it could have gone either way, and hopefully this year it goes our way.”

Deer Lakes last season finished fourth in Section 1-4A and put up a fight against higher-seeded Central Valley in the WPIAL first round, losing by nine points.

The Lancers dropped to Class 3A in the offseason and hope to make noise in a section with Carlynton, Derry, East Allegheny, Shady Side Academy, South Allegheny, Steel Valley and Valley.

The seniors will set the tone, Dave Petruska said.

“The big thing is that those four seniors, I’m looking for not just their returning experience but also their returning leadership,” Petruska said. “Over the summer it really seemed like they took over that leadership role full force, and three of them were captains last year. I’m looking for them to just continue with that role. But moving forward, I think they helped with keeping the chemistry alive this summer and getting a lot of participation in the summer leagues we did and our open gyms.”

While the seniors will lead, they’ll get pushed by a 10-member freshman class, the largest in Petruska’s four seasons as coach.

That already is happening in practice.

“The one thing I like from what I’m seeing is whenever we’re doing drills that involve running, especially when it’s just running lines, the freshmen are pushing the seniors hard,” Petruska said. “Really, it’s all of them, but there’s always five freshmen that are always pushing five upperclassmen. It’s really nice to see that that competition is there, and they’re going to be pushing each other and getting better from it.”

Deer Lakes lost four seniors from last season’s group: Emily Mischen, Marie Schmitzer, Eva Sipko, Alex Stump.

Sophomores Jenny Butler and Cameron Simurda and freshman Reese Hasley will provide depth for Deer Lakes, which skews guard-heavy. Junior Haley Zalus and sophomore Hannah Crousey add some size for the Lancers, but they plan to take advantage of their speed and athleticism.

“If you keep the pace, then it’s your pace and the other team can’t maintain it the way that we can,” Keibler said. “We’ve grown up with not having bigs, so I think we’re used to not playing with one. I think it helps us.”

As might be expected from a team built around seniors, Deer Lakes has high postseason-oriented goals for the upcoming campaign.

“The biggest thing I’m looking for this year is that we just continue to grow on and off the court,” Petruska said. “The biggest thing that I see is the potential for us to have something very spectacular in terms of the season, and the only we’re going to do it is if we grow.”

Doug Gulasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Doug at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.

Tags: Deer Lakes