Portagers focus on returning, not rebuilding

By DYLAN SAVELA, Manistee News Advocate Sports Writer
Published: Monday, November 16, 2009
ONEKAMA — Onekama lost some big pieces of last year’s team, but the Portagers aren’t considering this season to be a rebuilding project.

“I’m not going to call it rebuilding or reloading ... I don’t believe in that,” Onekama coach Roger Smith said. “We’re going to try and do the best we can, and see what happens.”

The Portagers are short four starters, who Smith said combined for 48 points a game.

“We don’t have the same kind of team that we had last year, obviously,” Smith said. “We had some good senior kids. Levi (Capper), Hunter (Slade) and Ryan (Miller) — they were on varsity for three years, and they played together and knew each other well. They were all decent ball players and it’s going to be tough replacing those guys.”

However, the Portagers are equipped with five returning players, including four seniors in Joe Kosiboski, Jake Matthews, Thomas Koon and Jordon Zupin, and one junior, Skyler Kimpel, who played and started last year as a sophomore.

“That gives us a pretty good returning nucleus of kids,” Smith said. “We’re expecting a lot from Joe and Skyler. Skyler is my only starter back from last year and Joe played a lot as a sixth man. (Kosiboski) hurt his shoulder in football (last year) and that set him back a bit, but when he came back in the second part of the season, he did a nice job for us.

“They are my two biggest kids,” Smith added of Kimpel and Kosiboski. “They’re both 6-1 and 6-2 maybe, and that’s it. So, size wise, we’re tiny.

“We’re not going to have as much height as most of the teams in the league, but that’s OK, we’re just going to have to work harder.”

Among the new faces to Onekama this year will be sophomore Austin Barnett as he makes the jump from playing on junior varsity last year.

“It’s going to be a big step,” Barnett admitted. “But I think we should do pretty good, as long as we play good defense.”

The need to play strong defensively was echoed by Smith.

“We’ve got to play defense,” he said. “I mean it’s pretty logical. We’ve got to work hard on defense because of the lack of height.

“I think we’ve got pretty good quickness, but we can’t just try to run and gun it,” he added. “We’ve got to try to take care of the ball and be selective.”

Because it is still very early in the season, Smith said the potential of his team is yet to be realized.

“I’ve got to wait and see what we can do,” he said. “Our main focus right now is our first game; a home game against Bear Lake. That’s enough of a challenge in itself.

“That’s all we’re going to do. We’re not going to try to look too far forward,” he added. “We know we won’t be favored to win conference or favored to win a district, so we’re just going to try to get better with each practice and each game, and see if we can’t sneak up on a few teams.”

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