Consistency is what the Cardinals need

– Joe Soccoa
CLAREMONT – Practice on a Wednesday at Frederick Carr gym was loose and smiles were on the faces of the eight Stevens girls basketball players that took part in an optional practice. The smiles of course, were a good sight for head coach Ivy Condon as her team took a beating the night before at the hands of Monadnock.

With the regular season drawing to a close and with seven games remaining including the Friday night game against Hillsboro-Deering, Condon is looking for a late season push to get some wins and some points for a spot in the playoffs. Going into the Friday matchup, the Cardinals will enter with a 4-7 record having 16 points on the season and a 1.45 rating. The schedule within these seven remaining games won’t be easy for the Cardinals by any means.

Of their next seven games, they will play two division two teams (ConVal and Kearsarge) both of whom have an under .500 record but again play in division two. They will also play fellow division foe Fall Mountain (9-3), Hopkinton (10-3), Gilford (10-2) and Newport (6-5). Games that Condon considers tough but winnable games.

It has been the lack of consistency that has Stevens in the position they are in. Some nights, they come out as the team that has the potential to be a top of the pack team while other nights you wonder if anyone showed up to play. Besides inconsistency, frustration also could be a word used to describe the Cardinals because they have that potential to be better than what their record states.

While at that optional practice on Wednesday, I asked coach Condon how she would describe the team’s season thus far and simply put it as, “Inconsistent. I mean one game we come out, like the one against Newport, where everyone was ready to play and everything clicked. We looked like the team that shows that potential and then boom the next game we look lost.”

It can also be difficult in a season, especially a high school season, where injuries occur and you can’t get a player back so quickly like you can in the pros but Condon won’t use that as an excuse for the losses that have mounted for the team. “We’ve battled with a lot of injuries but it’s part of the game and the only thing we can do about it is everyone needs to step up,” Condon said.

Not all looks bad for the program in which Condon has been a part of the better of three years. When she took over in the program, the Cardinals were either winning just one game or none. The future does look promising with a decent junior varsity program behind her and some younger players having looked good enough to come up and play with Varsity. “The JV group has come a long way and I like what is coming,” Condon said. “We are losing five seniors at the end of the year (Kelsey Belisle, Tess Whitney, Emily Mudge, Majestic Raymond and Alexis Ford), so we have some shoes to fill but I like what we are building here.

While the outlook seems good, there is some caution to be looked at as the Stevens athletic program is set to step up into division two next year, something Condon could be concerned with. “Going into division two is going to be a challenge, we don’t have the luxury like the division two teams have that have that added gym time, or trainers to come in and help players workout,” Condon said. “We spent a lot of time building this program accustom to division three and now its like we need to rebuild again for division two which is a different animal.”

Nonetheless, Condon and her coaches will be ready for it. As for the rest of this season, she still has seven more games to get through and give her team a shot for the playoffs, where anything could happen. “The one thing I have to say about this group is the chemistry. The chemistry is really strong and that’s what matters here. I think the way we approach these handful of games is making our adjustments and be prepared for anything,” Condon went on to say. “Anything can happen and we’ve dealt with unexpected injuries and we’ve needed to make the adjustments and I believe this very hardworking group can do just that going forward.”

It will take a serious effort, a more consistent effort for the lady Cardinals who will have to dig deep down and figure out a way to be in each of these remaining games to give them a chance to win. “We have to put four quarters together and if we do that we can win and beat some of these tough teams coming up,” Condon said.

“Champions aren’t made in the gym. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them – a desire, a dream, a vision”, Muhammed Ali.