A long shot ended Aberdeen Central’s girls’ basketball season a year ago, but the Golden Eagles will definitely not be a long shot to be among the top teams in Class AA this winter.

The squad returns every single member off last year’s squad, which fell in the SoDak 16 on a half-court buzzer beater.

“Obviously, everyone knows why we didn’t make it to the state tournament. The girls remember it, I remember it, but we’re not going to sit and hone in on those specific things,” said second-year Central coach Paiton Burckhard. “We’re going to look at why didn’t we put ourselves in better position at the beginning of the year? Why did we go on such a drought of losing?”

Burckhard said it was things that happened during the course of the season that eventually played into that last-second season-ending setback.

“That was kind of the trend of the year last year. We’d put ourselves in bad positions in specific games and then we’d have to work so hard to come back and sometimes it just wasn’t enough,” Burckhard said. “Just always telling our girls, you have to give 100 percent 100 percent of the time has been a huge theme for us.”

Central will once again rely on the twin towers of junior Lauryn Burckhard and senior Taryn Hermansen inside. The two NCAA Division I recruits (Burckhard to SDSU for basketball and Hermansen to USD for track and field), have been cornerstones of the team for several years.

“Lauryn and Taryn are phenomenal in there. They draw a lot of attention. They do obviously a lot for our team and they’re going to do that consistently. We know that,” Coach Burckhard said. “But how can we be a team that utilizes all five our athletes on the court, because that’s ultimately what’s going to bring us into the top in AA.”

Burckhard knows that the rest of the team has to play a key role in Central’s success, everything from ballhandling to perimeter shooting to playing solid defense.

“I think that just comes down to confidence, letting our girls know that yeah, we know that Lauryn and Taryn are in there, but they draw a lot of attention,” Coach Burckhard said, “so we need you step up and score, we need you to play defense. We need everyone on the floor to have an affective role to get the job done.”

Other returning starters include Ava Yeske, Emma Dohrer, and Kenadi Withers. Additional help will come from Kamdyn Borge, Julia Malsam, and Camryn Albrecht.

Central’s guards will be responsible for orchestrating the offense and handling opposing intense full-court pressure on a nightly basis.

“It’s no secret that everyone likes to full-court press in the AA, and that’s something that we’ve tended to struggle with, but putting girls in better positions and giving them that confidence, and a better way to get open, and just giving them the skills and letting them know, you can do this,” Coach Burckhard said. “The pressure is meant to stress you out and speed you up. That’s what it’s supposed to feel like, otherwise it’s not a good press.”

The Golden Eagles host Rapid City Central Friday night to open the season, before facing Rapid City Stevens on Saturday afternoon at Golden Eagles Arena.

Burckhard said a key for her team this season is to make sure everyone is giving all out effort, regardless of whether it’s the first game, a regular practice, or a postseason contest.

“Playing a full 32-minutes each night out, coming to practice and being ready to go. There’s no time in this season to take a game off or take a practice off,” she said. “You have to be physically and mentally here all the time, otherwise you get put in positions for that play-in game that you maybe don’t really like in that 8-9 spot, where you’re like oh, this is hard.”

Burckhard is not about to get too far ahead of herself when it comes to long-range goals and expectations.

“I’m kind of a person, be where your feet are. That’s what I tell the girls, be where your feet are,” she said. “You can’t control what’s already happened. You can do things to have an effect on what happens in the future, but you can’t control them until you’re already there. So, really just being in the moment and winning what’s right in front of us, because we’ve seen it, we’ve done it.”