When the weather starts getting chilly, sometimes it takes a little longer for the engine to warm up.
That was the case for the Indian Creek girls basketball team, which got off to an 0-3 start this season. In two of those losses, the Braves were without freshman guard Lauren Foster, who had led the team with 16 points in the opener against Martinsville.
Coach Brian Ferris wasn’t entirely surprised to see his team reel off six consecutive victories once Foster returned to the lineup.
“Lauren is just a motor,” he said. “She just goes. She’s an Energizer bunny; she works really hard in practice at every little thing she does, and that transfers, definitely, to the game.”
Foster and 6-foot-2 classmate Faith Wiseman have wasted little time making their presence felt for Indian Creek, which sits at 9-5 after Tuesday’s home win over Southport. The 5-7 Foster is the Braves’ top scorer at 17.5 points a game, with a career-high 29 last Saturday in a tough four-point loss to a strong North Harrison team. Wiseman contributes 8.3 points per contest while also leading the team in rebounds (8.4), steals and blocked shots.
Wiseman pairs well in the frontcourt with senior center Kurstin Thompson, Ferris says, because she also has the ability to play out on the perimeter and create space when it’s called for. The freshman takes pride in her ability to stretch the floor.
“It’s helpful,” Wiseman said of her versatility, “because if there’s bigger girls, stronger girls, I can step out and I can have the outside game and the inside game if we need it.”
In some cases, upperclassmen might get a bit salty about the idea of ninth-graders coming in and snatching up lead roles, but that hasn’t happened in Trafalgar.
“They were so welcoming and so supportive from day one,” Foster said of her older teammates. “If somebody got down on themselves, they would always pick them back up and always cheer them up.”
Ferris believes that not having a traditional offseason actually helped make it easier for Foster and Wiseman to fit in. Since almost all of the workouts were player-run, relationships formed more organically than they might have with coaches present.
“It didn’t take a coach or somebody putting them in there and saying, ‘You’re going to play with this person,’” Ferris said. “They saw, ‘Hey, I <em>want</em> to play with this person.’ So that helped out a lot.”
The infusion of young talent has put the Braves in position to contend for their first sectional championship since 2016. And with Thompson and Luci Woodrum as the only two seniors on the current roster, folks at Indian Creek are excited about the prospects for the future as well.
“The next three years, the sky’s the limit,” Ferris said. “If they continue to improve and get stronger … I think that we could see some fun times ahead with them leading the charge.”
Foster and Wiseman are eager to leave an imprint. The Braves have never won a regional title, and this dynamic inside-out combo would love to lead the way to that and more.
”I really want our picture up on that wall,” Foster said.
