Not featuring as much tallness as they have in years past, the Pella Christian boys’ basketball team has made do with their roster and turned it into a 5 – 1 start. Four players are listed at 5’11”, with the tallest being 6’6” Kenden Veenstra and Holden Hooyer. There hasn’t been a lot of height the Eagles have had to conquer this early in the year, and without the brute strength of David Kacmarynski in the post, teams in 2016 may try and take advantage of mismatches down below. Coach Larry Hessing says they’ve been working on countering this with a pair of different line-ups, and says substitutions may turn into a chess match with the opposing coach.

“If a team plays just one big, we think that we can do some things to try to neutralize that one big,” Hessing explains. “If a team plays two big people, then we might have to go to a bigger line-up, so those are some things that we have been working on. Conversely, we believe that a team with two bigs on the floor would have a difficult time guarding us if we had a smaller line-up on the floor. It might a little bit of a cat-and-mouse game if we get to those situations.”

Norwalk’s Moritz brothers, Trent and Cade, are 6’8” and 6’7”, respectively, with another 6’7” player in Michael Geistler that also sees some time on the floor. They’ll challenge the Eagles when they come to the nest this Tuesday to open up the 2016 portion of the season.