“A lot of people say that this is our rebuild year, but I truly believe that we never rebuild, we just reload,” is how senior Emily Piston sees the Parkland girls basketball program.

After losing some key players from last season, a total of five seniors, Parkland is working to fill some holes. One of the reasons that the Trojans continue to be so strong is that younger players generally get playing time. Because of that, when they’re looked at to step into bigger roles, they’re generally ready, even though that’s never guaranteed.

“You hope that the kids that are returning step up and play those leadership roles,” said Parkland head coach Wes Spence. “We lost two starters (Nadine Ewald and Sarah Stagaard), so hopefully girls like Rachel Medlar and Devyn Anderson are able to step into more of that leadership role on the floor. Emily Piston was a leader on the floor as a junior, so we hope that she’ll grow the way that Sarah did and the way that Nadine did from a junior to a senior.”

Spence is also looking to continue his approach of giving younger players plenty of time off the bench, but the amount of time that they get will depend on how well they step in to their roles with the team.

“Can Faith Nation come in and be a spark and even compete to be a starter? Can some of these younger girls, like Keeley Coval, a junior that played with the varsity last year, can she step up and be a key contributor? Those are some questions to answer,” said Spence.

Parkland was 20-6 overall last season and finished conference play at 15-1. But the Trojans went out early in the District 11 playoffs, falling to Northampton in the quarterfinals. This season, they look to beat that performance with a deeper playoff run.

“All of my goals are for the team, not personal,” said Piston. “We just really want to compete during the season and do our best to go deep into the league and district tournaments. I think we can do that, because from what I’ve seen so far, our younger players are doing really well and we still have a good core of players from last season.”

The early part of the season is where Parkland will start to gauge just how well the pieces are coming together. Teams generally look to answer some questions through the first month of the season, which for Parkland will include nonconference games at Lancaster Catholic and Delone Catholic and conference games against Bethlehem Catholic, Stroudsburg, Emmaus and Whitehall. The three Eastern Pennsylvania Conference schools were a combined 50-49 last season.

“That’s what December is all about,” said Spence. “You hope that the young kids step up and play those roles, so in that sense, we’re right there with everybody else, just fitting the pieces together.

“We had the same questions last year. Would Sarah and Nadine be effective leaders? And that was when we had to replace three starters and we were wondering if the new starters like Emily and Devyn and Rachel would be able to replace the production that we lost.”

Parkland’s unselfish team approach has taken it pretty far over the years and Spence is betting that the same will hold true this season. One of the keys for Parkland is that teams never know who is going to have the hot hand each night, making it difficult to look to shut down one key player.

“We’ve never been a team that has relied on one person,” said Spence. “It makes it easier if you have somebody you can count on for 10 to 15 points a night, but we’ve never really been that. It’s sort of can we put girls in positions where we can compete as a team? Emily Piston went from a girl scoring three or four points a game as a sophomore to scoring 10 last year and now, can she go even further, or because teams worry about her more, will it be a girl like Kassidy Stout, who people don’t know, or Julia Buchman or Faith Nation?”