PARK RIDGE — This year’s Maine South girls basketball team is the shortest one Mark Smith has had in his decade as the team’s coach, and that was evident at the start of the Hawks’ 38-25 loss to Glenbrook South.
Maine South 5-10 wing Nina Anderson took the opening tip Friday against Ashley Oldshue, the Titans’ 6-2 center. Anderson’s teammates didn’t even spread out around the center circle on the off chance the senior outjumped Oldshue. They set up their zone defense, and then Oldshue won the jump ball.
Glenbrook South had a big size advantage with Oldshue and 6-2 junior forward Caitlin Morrison. That usually spells doom for the undersized team when it comes to rebounding, but Maine South held its own.
The Titans only outrebounded Maine South by a 28-27 margin. The Hawks did a good job of boxing out, rebounding as a team and competing against a bigger frontline.
“They’re just strong and they’re physical” inside, Glenbrook South coach Steve Weissenstein said after the game.
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Senior forward Elizabeth Skoronski, who’s 5-10, led Maine South with seven rebounds. Anderson registered six, 5-8 junior guard Riley Eckhart finished with five and junior Jackie Ostojic, who’s a 6-1 guard, grabbed four.
Against a team like Glenbrook South, one of the keys to rebounding is for forwards like Skoronski and 5-8 senior Julia Spuria to box out, and then for the team’s perimeter players to help them.
That’s one reason why Anderson leads the team with 4.3 rebounds per game this season.
“We always work on going to the weak side when the girl’s on the strong side,” Eckhart said. “You go to the weak side to get the weak-side board. And [then we work on] just boxing out, jumping high and grabbing it with two hands.”
Another reason for Maine South’s rebounding success — the Hawks have averaged 28 rebounds a game this season — has been its hard-nosed mentality.
The Hawks have developed that with a drill called (Illinois) Wesleyan rebounding. It puts three girls on the outside and three girls on the inside to serve as offensive and defensive players, respectively. The offensive team is awarded two points if it gets a rebound and the defensive team gets one point if it gets a rebound.
The drill lasts for a minute, Skoronski said, and the players go as hard as they can.
“It gets kind of crazy sometimes [where Smith] has to stop it,” Skoronski said. “You’re diving on the floor, diving into the curtain. I think that’s what gives us our hunger to rebound.”
Smith has to be selective with how much his team does the drill because it can be so intense it could lead to injury. Skoronski added that the Hawks do it about once every two weeks — especially before games where the battle for rebounds will be vital.
“We get really competitive” during the Wesleyan rebounding drill, Eckhart said. “We have to get that [mind-set] and put it into the game.”