NORTH MANCHESTER – Mark Underwood is a science teacher at Manchester High School. And as the coach of varsity girls basketball team, the 12th-year skipper knows chemistry is important there too. “This is my 12th year with the girls program here, and I’ll be honest, one of the biggest contributing factors of how successful you’re going to be is chemistry,” said Underwood. “The girls have to get along. That cohesiveness is so important to a team.” Though Underwood calls this season’s squad the biggest he’s had in the past six seasons in terms of players’ height, the roster is a little shorter on players. The Lady Squires’ varsity roster features eight players – seniors Kayla Flack, Kalene Freshour, Autumn Brewer and Bekah Brunn; juniors Sydney Snep and Tabby DeWitt; and sophomores Claire Bennett and Madison Isbell. “We’ve been working hard on getting in shape,” said Underwood. “With so few players, we’re going to have to be in shape. I think we’ll be able to get up and down the floor, but I also want to have confidence in our half-court offense, and not just force shots.” The Lady Squires open the season tonight at Bluffton. Manchester has won its last four meetings with Bluffton. “Bluffton is going to be a strong team this year,” said Underwood. “They have a really good player in Gina Eisenhut. She’s capable of scoring 20 or 30 points a night. Our focus is on stopping her. “They also have a new coach,” added Underwood. “Karl Grau, I coached him at East Noble. They’re going to be very aggressive on the defensive end of the floor, and we already have two strikes against us. No. 1, it’s at their place, they have homecourt advantage. And No. 2, they’ll have already played a game and got their first-game jitters out.” Bluffton opened its season with a 44-32 loss to Blackford. While Manchester is trying to contain Eisenhut, Bluffton’s defensive gameplan will likely be centered around Flack. Flack, a 5-foot-7 guard/forward, has led the Lady Squires in scoring the past two seasons, and was the team’s second-leading scorer as a freshman. Flack averaged 14 points and seven rebounds per game last year, as Manchester posted an overall record of 16-6 and a 5-2 mark in the Three Rivers Conference. The Lady Squires shared the TRC title with Rochester, Tippecanoe Valley and Wabash. Underwood thinks the conference will be strong and highly competitive again this year, along with the rest of the Lady Squires’ schedule. “I feel like we can be competitive in every game,” said Underwood. “But as you look at our schedule, we’re playing some stiff competition. I think the conference is going to be very solid. And then we dropped a 2A school in South Adams, a game that had generally been a win for us, and picked up Fairfield. From top to bottom, our schedule is pretty tough.”
