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Smooth gear shift for Lakeville North girls' basketball

By BRYCE EVANS, Special to the Star Tribune, 02/25/14, 6:30PM CST

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With a Lakeville North grad in her first year as coach, the girls' 2019 basketball team is winning with defense and carrying on its legacy.


Erika Rozell is one of the leaders Lakeville North's girls' basketball team. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii, Star Tribune)

 

Coach Shelly Soule had a simple message for her Lakeville North girls’ basketball team at the start of this season, her first at the helm of the Panthers.

“We’re not going to win just because our name is Lakeville North,” she said. “No one is scared of a name.”

Throw out the legacy of producing top-tier talent, winning state championships and league titles — all of it. A team doesn’t win simply because of its track record, Soule said.

“The only way you live up to those legacies is by going out and earning it, working for it on your own,” she said. “You have to re-establish yourself every year if you want to keep that run going.”

And that’s the task that Soule and her Panthers (17-7, 12-4 South Suburban) were handed to start this season: keep it going.

Soule took over the powerhouse program this past offseason, and despite a rocky 3-3 start to the year, she has Lakeville North sitting at No. 8 in the Class 4A rankings and poised to get a top-two seed in its section.

Heading into Tuesday’s matchup with Lakeville South, the Panthers had won six consecutive games.

A different coach, different team and a whole new era.

“It’s been a smooth transition, and I think we’re surprising some people already,” senior Erika Rozell said. “Now’s the time that we have to reach that potential, though.”

Time for change

Andy Berkvam amassed 420 victories over 23 seasons in Lakeville before taking the boys’ head coaching job at his alma mater in Northfield last year. His Lakeville teams won three big-school state championships and produced a number of Division I players.

Soule is well-versed in the program’s history. She played point guard for Lakeville North before graduating in 2004. She went on to play Division II college ball at Minnesota State Moorhead.

After college, she joined Berkvam’s staff as an assistant coach while teaching in a nearby district.

“I grew up in this program, grew up watching his teams, and, obviously, it was always my goal to play for him,” she said. “To have the chance to come back here and learn more from him was amazing. He’s been a huge mentor to me, like a second father.”

Being part of the program for the past four years helped smooth the transition, Soule said. She’s worked to inject her own personality and coaching style into the program while trying not to disrupt all the positives she inherited.

“She’s just someone we can really relate to, because she’s gone through it all, too,” freshman point guard Temi Carda said.

Coming together

The team lost in the section final last season, stopping a three-year run of making the state tournament. The Panthers returned three seniors and a handful of other players who had key roles a year ago.

Junior MacKenzie Denk leads the team in scoring at 10 points per game, and Carda is right behind her at 9.8.

Balance and athleticism have been the keys this season, Soule said. The team’s seniors each plan on playing a college sport other than basketball, and Lakeville North has seven players averaging at least six points.

“It’s just a difference in styles,” Denk said, comparing this year’s squad to that of last year. “The biggest change has been in defense, just the attention to our individual roles. We’re really focused on being a strong defensive team.”

Lakeville North has played six of the other nine top-10 teams in the Class 4A rankings, experience Soule said will help her team in the playoffs. The Panthers close the season Friday against Class 4A No. 6 Bloomington Kennedy.

“At a school like Lakeville North, people expect a lot out of this team,” Soule said. “We expect a lot. We want to make it back to state, and it’s going to be tough. We’re going to have to prove it.”

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