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HARTINGTON - Hartington-Newcastle has moved on to the Greater Northeast Activities Conference for the Lady Wildcat’s 2024-25 season and second-year head coach, Grant Rolfes knows what he lost from his first season but also knows what he has coming back.
“We graduated a good senior group last year,” the coach said. “We will be young this year, we are almost half freshmen, but we have two returning starters in Maddie Steffen and McKenzie Bruning who we will look to for leadership.”
The Lady Wildcats finished 10-11 in Rolfes’ first year after winding up in the same SubDistrict with Crofton and dropping four o f their last five games and seven of their last nine, but this is a new season.
“We have the two returners, but we will need find where our other contributions on both ends of the floor will come from,” the coa ch said. “We hope they will come from some of the returning girls and then some young girls who are ready to play.”
Rolfes got the most out of his team last season until the late slide in the season. Some of that was competition and things just kind of snowballed on Hartington-Newcastle at the end of February last year.
The GNAC also provides some new hurdles to jump this year as the Lady Wildcats joined Neligh-Oakdale, Elkhorn Valley, West Holt, Plainview, Elgin Public/Pope John, Summerland and Laurel-Concord-Coleridge.
“The new conference will bring some tough games to our schedule,” the coach said. “We’ll see what comes to the front this year.”
Hartington-Newcatle will travel to Ponca to open the season on the road against the Lady Indians before a home contest with Summerland in a GNAC game on Dec. 7.
