REED CITY – Tim Beilfuss had just finished one week of practices with the Reed City girls basketball team while acknowledging how he felt as he starts his third season as girls basketball coach.
“I’m happy to be back in the gym and hopefully done with the COVID stuff,” he said on Friday night. “We have a young team. But it’s good to be back in the gym.”
Beilfuss anticipates having nine girls on his varsity team.
“We’ll have four seniors, two juniors and three sophomores,” Beilfuss said. “For JVs, we’ll have nine or 10.”
The focus during the summer was skills work, Beilfuss said.
“We went to Scottville for a scrimmage there and played a couple of good teams,” he said. “It was time to work on the fundamentals. We maxed out with our 15 days.”
The seniors include Paige Lofquist and Raquel DuBreuil. Christina Malackanich is a key returning player.
The season opens on Nov. 30.
“Our nonconference isn’t easy,” Beilfuss said. “We open at Cadillac, play McBain here on that Saturday and come back with Evart on Tuesday. Our nonconference games are tough. There’s no gimmes on the schedule.”
The Coyotes will be busy with nonleague scrimmages.
“We scrimmage Pine River this coming Tuesday, we’ll have that here in our middle school,” Beilfuss said. “The following Saturday, we’ll go to Farwell for a 12-team scrimmage. The following Tuesday after that, we’ll go to Scottville.
“We want to get some work in. We didn’t hit up the team caps during the summer. Now we want to get a better litmus test of where we are. It would be nice to where we are with our kids.”
