First-year girls basketball coach Kellie Kirkhoff conducts a practice on Monday at Whiteland Community High School.
Scott Roberson | Daily Journal
During her four seasons as a high school girls basketball player, Kellie Kirkhoff played for three different coaches — so she’s perfectly aware of what her Whiteland players are going through right now.
Kirkhoff, a 2014 Roncalli graduate, is the Warriors’ third coach in three years. But while she’s sensitive to the uncertainty that can come with that constant turnover, she also knows that there isn’t much room for walking on eggshells with a team coming off of a 5-18 campaign.
Fortunately for the coach, her players agree.
“They want to do what’s being asked of them,” Kirkhoff said. “Even if sometimes they don’t completely understand or, ‘Oh, we used to call it this,’ they work really hard and they’re all on the same page on what needs to get done to improve not only themselves, but the team as a whole.”
The combination of last season’s struggles and Kirkhoff’s track record of success — she played for two NAIA national championship teams at Marian — has made it easier for the players to buy in.
“I feel really confident in what she’s teaching us, what she’s making us do with the basketball,” senior forward Muskaan Ghuman said. “I really trust her.”
Kirkhoff spent the last two seasons cutting her coaching teeth at Greencastle, where she posted a 21-24 record. She was eager for an opportunity to return to the Indianapolis area, and she’s feeling good about the hand she was dealt in Whiteland after getting to work with the returning players over the summer.
The Warriors didn’t graduate any seniors, and most of last year’s rotation players are back, with five seniors still on the roster. Leading the way will be wing Braylyn Clendenen, who led the team in scoring last season at 11.8 points a game but wasn’t quite fully comfortable in the role of go-to player after playing a supporting role as an underclassman.
This year feels different.
“I’m going to be more prepared than I was last year,” Clendenen said, “because last year I did what I’m going to have to do this year.”
“Braylyn is the type of player that can come out and score 20 points and have eight rebounds any given night,” Kirkhoff said. “(But) I also think that we have a lot of very good pieces where we won’t begging her, or we just won’t score the ball, if she doesn’t score 20 a night.”
Indeed, four other returning Warriors — Ghuman, Emma Piercy, Kylee Marlin and Gracie Taylor — averaged at least 5.5 points last season, so Whiteland shouldn’t have to lean solely on Clendenen to put the ball in the basket. The biggest changes, though, will be coming on the defensive end.
Whiteland didn’t play any man-to-man defense last season under Ashley Fouch, who returned home to Daleville to coach the varsity boys. Kirkhoff has made the switch to man defense a priority, and it’s been a welcome change.
“That gets me excited,” Ghuman said, “because we get to communicate a lot more.”
“The energy is completely different,” Clendenen agreed. “Last year we were in a zone, and it was kind of lazy and not as hype as a man. The whole energy in practice, you can just tell it’s different. Our defense is going to be way better this year.”
Kirkhoff hopes that changing the energy at that end of the floor will lead to a change in the end result. She’s used to winning as a player, and she’s setting a high bar for the girls she’s coaching now.
“You can’t always win everything every single day,” she said, “but winning is the expectation. Putting in the work to create the opportunity to win is what we talk about every single day.”
