The Winona Christian Stars might have had a rough season, but head coach Nick Mumme believes the future is bright for his young team.
The Stars ended their season last week as they dropped a hard-fought 43-42 decision to North Delta in the first round of the Class 3A North State Tournament.
The Stars built a big first half lead but weren’t able to hold on as the Green Wave took a come-from-behind one-point win on Tuesday.
Winona led 7-2 at the end of the first period and outscored North Delta 19-12 to lead 26-14 at the half. But North Delta outscored Winona 15-9 in the third period to cut the lead to 35-29 going to the fourth. The Green Wave then outscored the Stars 14-7 in the fourth to take the win.
Jake Ware had a double-double for the Stars with 20 points, 10 rebounds and three steals. Collin Parkinson had 11 points and five rebounds.
First-year head coach Mumme said the Stars were a work in progress this past season.
“This year was a big learning curve,” Mumme said. "We have an extremely young team. At times we had three sophomores, a ninth grader and an eighth grader on the court playing for us. We have some extremely talented young kids on this team that are going to be very talented players for us over the next few years.”
Mumme said it took time for that young squad to learn what they were doing but showed signs of improvement at the end of the season.
“We started the year off really slow and part of that was they had to learn my system and they’re still learning it,” Mumme said. “We only played a total of 16 games this year, so there is still a lot of things I wasn’t able to put in. We started to see it all come together the last four games of the year. We showed glimpses of how good of a team we can be over the next few years during the last four games of the year.”
Mumme said he was especially thankful for senior Logan Graham
“I want to thank my lone senior, he was the ultimate team player and was a privilege to coach him,” Mumme said. “I don’t know if he knows this but he showed my young kids everyday what it means to be a true teammate and how to embrace a role for the betterment of the team. I can’t thank him enough. All the success this team has over the next few years, he’ll be a big reason for it. I can’t wait to attack this off-season with this group of kids.”
