The Pleasantville girls basketball team faced some injury problems throughout the season, but played well when they were at full strength. The Trojans had a strong start to the season, going 4-0 in non-conference play before dropping the final two games of December for a 4-2 mark at Christmas Break.

Looking to bounce back in the new year, those two losses ended up being the start of a nine-game skid. Most of those games were without Josie Hutchings or Carlie Sloan, two of the top players on Pleasantville’s roster. When they returned, the Trojans won four of their next six, before dropping three in a row to end the season. Pleasantville was knocked out in the quarterfinal round at home by Pella Christian. Head Coach Jeff Cook, who returned to the coaching role after a 12-year hiatus, points out a glaring aspect that doomed the team throughout the year.

“We were never a team that went out and scored a lot of points in a lot of quarters. There were nights we did, the night we played Des Moines Christian, we had 20 after the first, which is a great quarter for us. The night we came back and beat Earlham, we had 21 in the fourth, and stuff like that. That second quarter was never good to us. I looked back and I would venture to say that six or eight points was the most we scored in the second quarter in the entire year. There were a lot of times we scored two or four, and there were a few times we didn’t score at all in the second quarter. You better have really good first, third and fourth quarters if you’re not going to score in the second.”

The Trojans finished 8-13 overall and 3-11 in the West Central Conference. They’ll graduate two seniors.