Playing more than half of their regular season games prior to a long holiday break, the Norwalk girls basketball team stands 9-2 overall and 3-1 in the Little Hawkeye Conference. Considering that the Warriors were 2-5 at this time a year ago, the progress under first-year head coach Joe Sigrist has been quick and pronounced.

Led by junior guard Bailey Birmingham’s 24.5 points per game, the Norwalk girls have scored at least 58 points in all but two contests. They have also used relentless defensive pressure to hold five teams to 46 points or less. The Warriors exceeded last year’s win total by starting 7-0 and have been ranked as high as third in Class 4A.

Despite a 55-20 loss at top-ranked Dallas Center-Grimes last Thursday night – a game in which Norwalk shot 15 percent from the field – Sigrist grades his team’s November/December start as a solid A-. Sigrist says he is “real proud” of the Warriors’ first half and believes they will continue to improve during January and February.

“(The DC-G loss) is going to sting a little bit with how we performed, but that shouldn’t take away from the nine games we did win,” he said. “Just the response that these girls have had in a short time frame of us [working] together… I’m super proud of them. We’ve just got to use this as a learning experience and I think we’ll be a lot better in the second half.”

The Warriors girls took five days off following their last game, returned to practice December 27 and will host an eight-team scrimmage this morning. After another break, they will resume practices January 3 and finally return to competition on Tuesday, January 9, at Newton.

Sigrist says that Norwalk must continue to work on finding ways to create offense and score more points when good defensive teams scheme to take Birmingham away. “We need to all be confident, shoot a lot of shots, find different ways to score – and that’s partially on us as coaches, too – and then continue to evolve defensively,” Sigrist said.

In addition to Birmingham’s lofty scoring average, Warrior junior Braelyn Clark and sophomore Ava Carlson are both averaging just below 10 points per game on the season.