Following a 3-14 season in 2024, expectations for the Wetumpka girls' basketball team were relatively low, to say the least. However, any doubters the team had were quickly silenced after the season Wetumpka had.
Head coach Harriet Winchester and the Indians quintupled their win total while also going from worst to first in the area, taking down cross-town rival Stanhope Elmore in the area championship to reach the playoffs. For her efforts this year, Winchester is the Elmore County Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.
She knew early on this team would be different as Wetumpka had a perfect blend of young and old talent. The senior and freshman class equaled itself with some contribution coming from the middle school level as well. But what set them apart heading into this year was the shift in the team’s mindset.
“Firstly, I noticed that our senior leadership made a drastic change,” Winchester said. “I think that they wanted to win as bad as the coaches wanted them to win as well. I felt like all of the players on the team bought into the program. They bought in discipline-wise, development-wise, and just team bonding-wise; they just bought in.”
Winchester knew there were still some hurdles to overcome, especially in the experience department. Although she has three seniors in Zariah Clark, Jordan Harris and Keeyana Rudolph the rest of the team was composed of underclassmen like freshmen Aaliyah Humphrey, Lillian Wellborn and Logann Banks. Despite the sprinkle of youth, Winchester stressed to her younger girls they have the ability to take on whoever is placed in front of them.
“Just making sure that they understood that the expectation of them playing well wasn't about their age,” Winchester said. “It was just about knowing we see what y'all are capable of, and we know that you're going to be going against kids that's a little bit older, we can't focus on age. At one point, we told them, what grade you’re in doesn't really matter anymore. We just need you guys to know that y'all are on the team for a reason because we know y’all are capable of playing with them. Once we established that, and they actually saw it, that played a huge factor.”
All the hard work that had been put in heading into the season revealed itself once the girls got on the court. Once area play rolled around, Wetumpka was a hard team to stop, going a perfect 4-0, and it carried that momentum into the championship. Even though Wetumpka fell in the first round of the playoffs to Pike Road, Winchester knew the groundwork had been paved with the expectations of besting its win total in the following season.
“My expectation for the girls is that we want to do more,” Winchester said. “We want to exceed what we did this past season, but we can't do that unless we actually put the work in and we continue to buy into the program. I honestly think next season is going to be even better because we got a taste of how it feels, everything's going to play out well.”
Winchester knows something special is brewing in Wetumpka and with the Indians’ top three scorers returning for next season, all eyes will be on them.
“Make sure that we keep an eye on the kids from Wetumpka High School,” Winchester said. “Our program is going to grow, and it's going to get better, and we'll be a force to reckon with.”
