Bulldogs continue to build culture

While the season may not have gone the way the Hampton-Dumont-CAL Bulldogs would have liked as the team had a record of 0-14. But head coach Ben Schlachter said that a positive for the Bulldogs this year was how the team grew to trust each other more as the season went along as well as believing in themselves and their teammates.”

“They really started to do that well for really the last half of the season,” Schlachter said. “They showed a lot of growth in that area.”

Despite the record, Schlachter said that the Bulldogs have made progress from where they were at the start of the previous season. Schlachter said that the girls who are returning are excited for next season.

“I think this season was pretty successful when it comes to the things that we consider to be a success,” Schlachter said. “Success for us right now in the middle of changing culture is keeping the girls positive and keeping them competing when they are down seven or eight goals and keeping them excited for next season and we did that.”

One thing that Schlachter said he thinks one thing the returning players can take away from this year and use to take the next step next season is believing in themselves and believing in their teammates and being able to trust each other. Schlachter said that there will be camps in the offseason to continue to build on that trust.

“So I think that going into next season they will have that head start that they did not have this year or the year before,” Schlachter said. “I think that is what has them excited right now because they know if they stay on the path we are heading down they will start to see it in the scoreboard and in their record in the next year or two.”

One area on the field that Schlachter said he would like to see the team work on during the offseason is supporting each other while on offense.

“We have it figured out on defense but the thing that hurt us the most is that we started to have some more successful possessions on offense, but it would be one or two girls taking the ball up field and the rest of them just kind of jogging along and watching,” Schlachter said. “They were not following the shot if we took a shot so those are the kind of things that we want them to focus on getting better at.”

Schlachter said that the team had multiple players named to the All-Conference team. They were Mallory Rieken who made first-team for defense, Genesis Morales was third-team on defense and Madison Heilskov was third-team utility

Schlachter said his final message to the girls was to use the way the season ended as fuel for next year.

“I truly love and care for each one of these girls so my heart was broken for them because they really fought hard in the last game so my message was to use that for fuel moving into next year,” Schlachter said. “And to take a step back and look at where we started and where we were after that last game and just to build off of that.”