Greenwood coach Jenny Finora, right, presents one of her players with an axe after a good practice effort.
Rob Baker | For the Daily Journal
When she was hired as Greenwood’s girls basketball coach in May, Jenny Finora sat down to watch some film of the team from the 2022-23 season.
After watching one half of one game, she stopped.
“I wanted it to be fresh for everybody. I didn’t want to come into practice knowing what people could do,” Finora said. “I just wanted a clean slate, a fresh start.”
Greenwood has also offered a fresh start for Finora, who is getting back in the coaching game after nearly five years away from the bench. This is her first high school head coaching job following collegiate head coaching stints at Division II schools Coker (2010-15) and Mars Hill (2016-18). She left the latter post in November of 2018 due to lingering issues from a head injury that she suffered while practicing with her team.
Finora is thrilled to be back in the gym.
“It’s my favorite time of the day, because I get to do what I love and teach the girls new things,” she said. “They’ve been really receptive, so that’s been a big bonus; you never know coming in how it’s going to be with a new coach, but they’ve been great.”
Having some credibility has helped. In addition to her college coaching background, Finora can lean on her playing experience — the former Jenny Pfeiffer was a 2002 Indiana All-Star at Jennings County and went on to play at the University of Kentucky. She remains the Wildcats’ career leader in free throw percentage (86.1) and is among their all-time top 10 3-point shooters.
Having played at a high level — she added a season of pro ball in Iceland to her résumé after graduating — Finora has found that she has a different set of expectations than the players she inherited. She’s been working through the offseason and preseason to get them onto the same page with her.
“The biggest difference for me and them to get on the same page is just to go hard all the time and just to kick it to that next gear, to push themselves harder than what they know they can push themselves,” Finora said. “They think conditioning that we do is a lot, and I think it’s not a lot at all.”
In order to drive that point home, the coaches have been doing punishments — more core and leg exercises than sprints — alongside the players. (“I still have it in me to compete,” Finora said.)
Having spent plenty of time outside of Indiana, Finora says that she knew she wanted to come back here eventually. She relocated to Greenwood a little over a year ago and loves the conveniences that come with suburban life, both for herself and for her children. At her last stop in North Carolina, she explains, the nearest Target was more than 30 minutes away; now, it’s five minutes from home.
When the chance to lead the Woodmen came along, she couldn’t pass it up.
Now, Finora is tasked with rebuilding a squad that went 8-15 a year ago and lost its top three scorers along with most of its interior size. None of the returning players averaged more than 3.7 points last winter.
Greenwood developed a reputation as a grind-it-out defensive team the last couple of seasons under former coach Justin Bennett, but even though there aren’t any proven scorers back, Finora plans to switch the style up a bit.
“I’ve always been man to man, no gap, pressure, high-intensity man-to-man defense,” she said. “I really like to play up-tempo. We don’t have a lot of size, so we’re going to have to be a run-and-gun team, try to score quick in transition on quick hitters. Hopefully that’ll work for us.”
Whether it works in terms of wins and losses right away is largely irrelevant in the big-picture view of things. Finora has already embraced all things Woodmen, and she’s planning to stick around for as long as she can.
“I hope I finish my career here,” she said.
SCOUTING THE WOODMEN
Coach: Jenny Finora
Last season: 8-15, lost to Center Grove in Class 4A sectional opener
Key returnees: Stasia Buckalew, Charlee Mayo, Breanna Pierce and Gabrielle Wegesin, seniors; Emma Gardner and Keyara Johnson, juniors
Top newcomers: Alyssa Hamm and Courtney Hankenhoff, seniors
Outlook: The Woodmen graduated nearly three-quarters of the scoring from a team that didn’t score very much to begin with — so on paper, new coach Finora faces a steep uphill climb. But she’s feeling optimistic, banking that a change in style will help get the most out of an undersized squad. Mayo, Buckalew and Gardner have the most meaningful varsity experience among the returning players, but all three will be taking on considerably bigger roles than they did last winter. Finora believes she has plenty of talent on hand and a lot of “untapped potential.” Whether that translates into wins right away remains to be seen, but don’t expect the Woodmen to back down against anybody.
