After closing out last season with a 23-9-5 record and a third-place finish in the Missouri State High School Athletics Association’s Class 2 state tournament, one might assume that coach Darren Verseman’s biggest challenge would be adjusting to the graduation of seven players from last year’s team.
“It was a good time,” said Verseman of the Lady Indians’ 2024 season. “With the Rubel girls coming in, you kind of knew that we were upping the ante a little bit, but we had a pretty strong roster before. And, as it goes with high school sports, you always have graduation and girls move on. You have to move girls into different positions and so on and so forth. But I’m sure looking forward to this one too. We’ve got six girls coming back that have a lot of varsity experience. The cupboard’s not bare by any stretch of the imagination, even though we graduated seven girls.”
In 2024, St. Vincent defeated the Hermann Bearcats 3-2 to win third place in the Class 2 State Tournament at the Show Me Center held Nov. 9 in Cape Girardeau.
Instead, Verseman said, any difficulty he’s been facing this year has been more about scheduling practice time than filling the roster.
“This year will be a little bit leaner [on varsity],” Verseman said. “We don’t have a ton of sophomores, so we’ll move some of them up permanently, and it’ll balance out to where we’re able to have subs.”
Moving down the roster, the difficulty increases.
“We have 14 freshmen,” Verseman said. “It’s a lot when you’ve got one gym and you’re kind of limited on space. Practice gets to be a bit of a challenge with that many in the gym at one time. But there’s worse problems to have, so I’m not complaining.”
Add to that a bit of a staff shortage, as one of Verseman’s assistants had to step away for family reasons.
“We’re a little skinny on coaches,” Verseman said. “One had to step away this year, so we couldn’t find anybody to replace her. We’re looking for a volunteer assistant to kind of fill in there. But I’ll have a little more hand in the JV than I had before.”
