For the Northampton girls’ basketball team, making the district playoffs has been a standard.

The Konkrete Kids made the district playoff last season as the eighth seed. However, they suffered a 58-30 defeat to top-seeded Emmaus.

This season in a transition year, the Kids fell short of districts with an overall 6-16 record.

“As a coaching staff, we were very proud of how the team competed this year,” evaluated Jacksists, who has guided the program for more than 20 years. “Although we came up short on qualifying for the district tournament, we continued to play with total team effort. We didn’t look at this season as a total failure.

“We saw improvement from each player in their own individual way, from our seniors making strides to our young players getting valuable varsity experience.”

Jacksits will miss senior co-captains Isabella Pecuch and Abbie Luipersbeck along with fellow seniors Ro Echevarria, Kelly Reenock, Emilia Hirschmann.

Pecuch, who plans to pursue a career as a physician assistant, watched the team battle through the season, and she also overcame her own hurdles. She was the team’s leading scorer this past season, averaging roughly 10 points a game.

“The team suffered a lot of adversity from the start of the season,” said Pecuch. “Most girls didn’t come out to play or some could not play due to injury. The team was able to overcome adversity and win some games.

“I definitely feel like I achieved what I wanted to this season, not only as a team but also as a person. It was hard showing up to practices after tough losses, but that gave me more motivation to practice hard every day no matter what happened. I was focused on getting a little bit better every day.”

The veteran head coach will look to returnees Laila Reichl, Lily Vitushinsky, Evangelina Gougoustamos, and Emilee Hudson to help set the pace for next season.

“We will bid farewell to five seniors and welcome back six underclassmen three of which had significant playing time,” added Jacksits. “We thought our seniors did a good job leading the team this year led by our two team captains, Isabella Pecuch and Abbie Luipersbeck.

“As coaches, we thought the girls genuinely had fun playing together this year. We look forward to next year as a new group of young and talented girls move up to the high school level.”