The New Trier High School girls basketball team opened its season last month at the annual New Trier/Loyola Thanksgiving Tournament, posting a 2-3 record with two victories over Stevenson High School and Phillips High School, coupled with losses against Fenwick High School, Carmel Catholic, and Loyola Academy during the tournament. 

The tournament—hosted at both New Trier and Loyola—is made up of six teams playing in round-robin style games that started on Nov. 18 and ended the day before Thanksgiving on Nov. 26.  

The Trevians look to find their standing among other Illinois High School Association girls basketball teams and within the Central Suburban League (CSL), as well as their own identity as a team. With only five returning varsity players, the group entered the tournament with an open mind, interested to see how the team plays together in a real game, according to senior captain Avery Schecter. 

Prior to the Stevenson game and the other tournament contests, the team scouted out the competition by watching their film, an essential reason for the program’s defensive success, first-year head coach Stephanie Kuzmanic said.

“The part we had to focus on was that it’s not just up to the two people guarding the best players; it’s a whole team effort,” senior captain Grace Bowie said.

This strategy helped take the Trevs to their first win of the season against Stevenson on Nov. 18 (56-40), offensively led by junior captain Emerson Buck with 21 of their 56 points, followed by junior Vic Wainscott scoring 16. Buck was later named to the all-tournament team, with an average of 14 points and five rebounds throughout the five games. The victory was not only exciting for the team, but was also a historic win as it marked the first time New Trier beat Stevenson in the tournament since 2017.

“The first quarter was maybe the best first quarter of basketball we may play all year,” Kuzmanic said. “We couldn’t miss on offense, and we just stifled them defensively. We played awesome. So it was a sigh of relief for everybody after that first quarter: ‘Okay, we’re going to be all right this year.’”

Going into the next game against Fenwick High School on Nov. 20, Bowie believed that knowing the opponents was even more important as they were a more well-rounded team, so they had to focus on understanding Fenwick’s system as a whole.“Even if you’re not supposed to be guarding them, you had to be ready to stop them if they got open in a press,” Bowie said. “It was just like a team effort making sure everyone knew what’s happening, and not just your player. You had to know the whole team personnel.”

Though the Trevs fell 48-55, it was during these first two games that the team learned how to play together and respond to adversity. 

During the subsequent match against Phillips on Nov. 22, the team worked to control the pace of the game by focusing on winning every 50-50 ball and preventing turnovers. Implementing these goals drove the Trevians to a 54-46 victory, where Wainscott had a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds, Buck had 8 points, and Bowie earned an impressive 10 rebounds.

In the beginning of their next game against Carmel Catholic on Nov. 24, the Corsairs went on a run in the first quarter, out scoring the Trevians 21-9. Despite the difficult start, the team focused on staying mentally strong and encouraging each other in order to close the deficit and get in the other team’s head. 

“We did a good job on the bench staying engaged and encouraging even though we’re in these hard moments,” Bowie said. “Something we’ve been talking about a lot recently is not only cheering when we score. We need to keep trying to keep up the energy when things are going wrong…We stayed with it.”

By staying persistent and working hard, the Trevs were able to gain on Carmel Catholic; however, it was too late to take the victory, losing 41-52. Despite this, the game showed the team the importance of controlling the controllables, Kuzmanic believed. 

“Something that I’ve told them since day one is we can be outplayed, but we can’t be outworked,” Kuzmanic said. “We can’t control the other team’s necessarily shooting percentage or how well they play or the offense they put in, but you can control how hard you play, your effort, rebounding, little things like that.”

Even with the loss, the game was good preparation for the following match against Loyola on Nov. 26, since Carmel Catholic had a packed student section that yelled and chirped the team as they played, which is a huge component of the Loyola rivalry. The game against Loyola is one of the most attended of the season, besides against Evanston Township High School.

“It’s a much different atmosphere when it’s a game like [Loyola],” Bowie said. “There’s a lot more people, so it just feels like a lot more pressure.”

Even though the Trevians had a strong start to the game, according to Schecter, the team struggled creating a comeback against the Ramblers as Loyola continued to take control of the game. While they were only down 7 points at the half, Loyola went on a run, which propelled them to a decisive 59-32 victory.

“Teams make runs in basketball,” Kuzmanic said. “That’s how it goes…If you let it fall and let the pressure consume you and it causes you to fold, you’re going to come out and not play your best and fight back.”

And fight back they did. Despite the Ramblers’ growing lead, the Trevs focused on honing their play. 

“Not just being like ‘we need to win,’ but being like ‘we need to get every loose ball,’ ‘we need to get every rebound,’” Bowie said. “Not just focusing on scoring every basket, because that’s not everything. There’s a lot more things you need to focus on.”

Following the Loyola game, the team looks to build upon what it has worked on in the preseason and learned from during the Thanksgiving tournament in its match against Evanston on Dec. 2 at home, fighting to win one of the most longstanding rivalry games in Illinois basketball. 

“It’s going to be a battle,” Kuzmanic said. “Sometimes you’re going to compete at your highest level and a team was just better and they won the game, but we have to be able to come off every game saying that we competed as hard as we could…Hopefully if we compete every day and do the little things, then the wins will take care of themselves.”

Though the team is young and faces a difficult schedule with tough competition in the CSL, as the team spends more time together and newer players get comfortable on the varsity court, Kuzmanic believes the Trevians’ game will improve immensely. Additionally, leadership from players like Bowie, who leads the team with 25 more rebounds than any other player, will help ease this transition. 

“The players are really buying into the culture that we’re trying to create, and I think that is going to propel us really far,” Kuzmanic said. “ We knew it was going to be a tough first couple weeks with really good teams that we’re playing, but we want that because that’s going to prepare us for conference and eventually for playoffs. We could have gone into a tournament where we’re up 30 on teams, but that’s not going to prepare us for the CSL.”