Tecumseh’s 8th grade girls basketball team finished 19-0 and CBC champions

Over the last few years, the Tecumseh girls’ basketball program has endured much success, which includes this year as they captured the 2015 CBC championship. The Arrows’ opponents couldn’t do much to slow down the high-octane Arrows offense.

As good as the Arrows were this year, the future looks even brighter if that’s possible. Although Tecumseh will lost three key seniors, their top three players are all sophomores, and if you look down the pipeline at the middle school program, the future looks incredibly bright for the Arrows.

Both the Tecumseh eighth grade and seven grade teams recently won the CBC championship, as the seventh graders finished with one non-league loss on their schedule and finished 18-1 on the season. The eighth grade squad finished the season 19-0.

What’s even scarier for the Arrows opponents of the future, their combined record including middle and high school was 77-4 this season.

The Arrows eighth grade team, coached by 2008 Tecumseh graduate and former Arrow basketball player Ceslie Shellhaas cruised through the season without a blemish, but for her, it was more about preparing than necessarily celebrating.

“I really enjoyed coming in and working with Mike Mastin (seventh grade coach), who was a great mentor for me,” Shellhaas said. “Both of us have eight players on the team, but our program can be very intimidating since all of these girls have played basketball together since third grade.”

“We had some rough early scrimmages. I think the thing with my team is the mentality. Middle school is a difficult time, they are trying to have fun while figuring out who they are as people. Once the season ended last year, I was really excited once I knew I was going to move up and be able to coach them again.”

While they finished unbeaten on the season, Shellhaas admitted that is was a challenge with the season being so long for the kids.

“Basketball is one of the longest seasons, going from the end of October to February is a very long time to keep the grind going,” Shellhaas said. “With the holiday, it is almost like you are going through two seasons.”

“The biggest things with these kids was getting them to play with some confidence.”

Members of the Tecumseh eighth grade team were Ashlyn Pike, Delaney Martin, Katie Rawlins, Lyndsay Back, Terah Harness, Jayla Gentry, Evelyn Barber and Megan Jenkins.

“We laid out the expectations and kept the kids accountable for those expectations every single day,” Shellhaas said about her group. ‘I think that is how we finished the season strong, we never let the goal slip away.”

This group lost three games as seventh graders last year, and after they made it through the regular season unbeaten, Shellhaas was asked about the extra push to finish the job.

“When we were 16-0, we focused on finishing the race. We played the tournament on a Monday, Thursday and Saturday, so it was a very busy week for us. We wanted to show why we were the number one seed.”

*The Arrows seventh grade team also finished the season as CBC champions, losing only one game all season, a 10-point loss to Alter in a non-league contest. Coach Mike Mastin has a special group of kids, who like the eighth-grade team, won the league finals by a large margin.

Like Shellhaas, Mastin knows that the talent pool in the Arrows program is running high right now, and he was impressed how well this young group of players performed this season.

“It is a big transition period for these girls, because they were used to practicing maybe twice a week, and we go six days a week, two hours a week and it’s a learning process,” Mastin said. “They have come a long way, and competing against a very talented group of eighth graders every day in practice has made my girls so much better.”

Mastin has seen plenty of good things from these kids. Despite the fact they are only in seventh grade and playing in their first year of organized school basketball, the future looks bright for the Arrows.

“These kids have learned how to practice every day with great effort,” he said. “We hold every girl accountable for that.”

The Arrows finished 18-1 overall this season, and the team consists of Hannah Yates, Maggie Lapois, Mae Mastin, Serenity Castle, Joellee Berner, Allison Boswell, Emily Jones and Cali Budurka.

A lot has changed in their game since the first day of practice through the end of the season, and Mastin was first to point out the defensive side of the ball.

“These kids have learned how to play defense, not only on-ball but off the ball,” he said. “We dedicate a lot time in practice to defensive drills, and we play strictly man-to-man and press full court from the start of the game.”

The leading scorers for the Arrows seventh grade team were Mastin at 18 points per game, and Castle at 15 points per game and led the team in rebounds.

“This team shares the ball, that’s what makes them really good.”