WABASSO — The Wabasso girls basketball team was a force to be reckoned with on the glass this season, leading them to an eight-win increase from last year and their first postseason win since 2019.

“The difference from last year to this year is that we really wanted to focus on outrebounding every team,” Wabasso head coach Paige Richert said. “We’re not a strong shooting team, so we wanted to outrebound every team and get second or third opportunities where we get higher-percentage shots from inside, and just building on knowing our offense and our defense. With it all being new last year, we wanted to have another year underneath our belt where we started to get more solid knowing the things that we need to know.”

As a team, the Rabbits grabbed 41.9 rebounds per game. Leading the charge for the Rabbits on the glass was Kenley Guetter, a freshman forward who wasn’t a starter at the beginning of the season.

Still, she carved out a spot for herself with her efforts on the glass, leading all of the Independent’s area schools with 15.6 rebounds per game, 7.2 of which came on the offensive end of the court. Defensively, she led the team with 24 blocks and her 31 steals tied her with Audrey Johnson for third on the team behind Cassie Bliss’ 38 and Sara Carlson’s 36.

“She found where she fits into the team so well and she just went with it,” Richert said of Guetter. “Being down low and being one of the bigger shoes right there, but she was also able to grab a rebound when she was on the top of our 1-2-2 [zone]. We ran it a little bit, but it helped because she knows her placement on boxing out and everybody else around her also boxed out their outside shooters, so it let the ball drop right in front of her a lot easier.”

The Rabbits weren’t short on other players who could make an impact on the glass either. Ava Samyn put up 6.8 rebounds per game, while Elizabeth Morin and Cassie Bliss added 4.1 and 4.8, respectively.

Samyn and Guetter were also the Rabbits’ scoring leaders. Samyn put up 10.5 points per game and Guetter averaged 13.5, also leading the team in field goal percentage and free throw percentage.

The Rabbits put together a 1-26 record last season, Richert’s first after taking over for Neil Dolan when he stepped down from his 23-year tenure as the head coach. She quickly coached the team up in her second season, guiding Wabasso to a 9-19 record.

Wabasso got off to a slow start, dropping six of seven games to start the season. It didn’t take long for the Rabbits to shift their momentum, however, winning four of the next five to regain some momentum.

Down the stretch of the season, Wabasso continued to press forward. The Rabbits won two of their last three regular-season games, and defeated ninth-seeded Renville County West 48-42 to claim its first Section 3A tournament win since it downed Russell-Tyler-Ruthton in the 2018-19 pigtail.

“We took huge pride from walking into the locker room winning our first playoff game since [2019]. I mean, that was a nail in the coffin that this group understood that they accomplished something,” Richert said. “That was a huge improvement that everybody is absolutely proud of in this community. They’re getting basketball back on track with the Wabasso name.

Each day in practice, the girls came into practice with a desire to get better, Richert said. She cited the way they played over the summer after scrimmaging other area teams in a way they hadn’t before as a way in which that effort showed.

The Rabbits won’t be without losses next season. Carlson and Audrey Johnson have both been staples of the team for the last few years and will be graduating in the spring.

“I’ll miss our seniors dearly. They were one of my first groups that I had, so they’ll forever hold a special place in my heart,” Richert said. “They were great leaders for us. When we had problems and things were going wonky in practice, I could just be looking at them and they’re like, ‘Yup, OK,’ and they would pull the team aside, talk to them and tell them that we need to figure stuff out. They’d hype them up, they were a big backbone to our team.”

For the most part, however, the team’s key contributors are returning next year. Guetter and Bliss will be just sophomores next year and Ava will be a junior, leaving a multi-year runway for this iteration of Rabbits to continue building.

“Knowing that I have those returners and that they know my expectations for the next however many years that they’re going to be playing for me is huge,” Richert said. “They’re the ones that are going to be setting the precedents right away this summer, or showing if they want to continue from the nine wins that we had this year or if we’re going to backslide. I can tell you the team I know will be like, “Nope, we’re going somewhere next year.”