BOURBON - The Triton Trojans have a new coach, but he's not a new face to the team.
After spending the last four years as the coach of the Triton junior varsity girls team, Adam Heckaman takes over the varsity reins this year. Heckaman takes the place of Paul Walker who resigned at the end of last season."It's going to be nice because all the girls played for me at some point on the junior varsity," Heckaman said. "So they all know me and what I expect from them."
A year after finishing with a 9-13 record, Heckaman hopes to translate some of his junior varsity game plan into the varsity game, but knows it won't be easy.
"There's a lot of differences between varsity games and JV games," he said. "Varsity teams are able to score a little more than JV, so we'll need to put more pressure on the perimeter."
Heckaman wouldn't mind seeing a few points come off that pressure, especially after the Trojans averaged 39.8 points a game each of the last two years.
"Defense will be the No. 1 priority," he said. "Our plan is to push the ball a lot more. I did that on the JV, but the varsity has been slowing it down in the past couple of years. Our goal is to be able to shut the other team down, then push the ball up the court."
Having a familiarity with the girls should help Heckaman, but the return of everyone outside of the graduated Jessica Ganshorn will also be a benefit.
"We have a lot of returners from last year," he said. "We'll miss Jessica Ganshorn a lot, but we do have a lot back. That helps a lot, especially for a first-year coach."
Among the returnees is senior Paige Davis, who led the Trojans in points (11), assists (1.3), rebounds (5) and steals (1.9) per game last year.
"She's very vocal," Heckaman said about the leadership of Davis, who's been on the varsity team since she was a freshman. "If she's thinking about something, she's not afraid to speak up or meet with me with questions. She knows what she needs to do and what the team needs to do."
Among the supporting cast around Davis will be seniors Kelsey Bessinger, Taryn Cooper, Bethany Lemler and junior Brittany Wallace.
"We have a lot of girls that are kind of the same player," Heckaman said. "So it will all depend on who's hot and who's not. We talked about roles on the team, and what we expect from each player. We have a lot of depth."
That depth should help the Trojans when it comes to Northern State Conference play, where they went 3-4 last year.
"Our conference is tough, top-to-bottom," Heckaman said. "Culver and LaVille struggled last year, but they had a lot of freshmen and sophomores. So they'll be improved. Then you have the regular tough teams in Bremen, Jimtown and John Glenn. The conference will be tough, but our goal is to finish in the top half."
To get into the top half of the NSC, if not better, Heckaman is banking on the experience of six seniors to get some late-game victories.
"This year, I hope we're a lot more relaxed at the end of games," he said. "We have a lot of game experience, so that should help us in close games."
Triton will get its first opportunity to see how that experience meshes with Heckaman's inexperience Friday at home against North Judson, beginning at 8 p.m.
