LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Grand Island Senior High will forgo its 2024-25 varsity girls basketball season, the school announced Friday.
In a press release, the school announced that there were no junior or senior students going out for the sport.
After meeting with parents and student-athletes, the decision was made to invest in developing the reserves and freshman-level teams, rather than fielding a varsity team with freshman and sophomores.
Head coach Kathryn Langrehr and her coaching staff will remain with the program.
The school’s activities director, Chris Ladwig, released a statement on the decision:
“We’re committed to this program. And it’s because of our commitment to cultivating girls basketball at Grand Island — and our state — that we are taking this difficult but innovative approach.” Ladwig said in the statement. “We want to provide the best student athlete experience we possibly can for our kids. Right now, we don’t have the numbers to roster an upper-class Varsity team. So, our focus will be to continue developing our Freshman and Sophomore players and put together a ‘full court press’ towards re-building our youth programs in our community. We stand behind Coach Langrehr and her vision for this program — she has our full support.”
Grand Island Public Schools Superintendent Matt Fisher said schools across the state are seeing a trend of shrinking numbers in high school girls’ basketball programs.
“Numerous high schools across all classes are facing challenges with fielding teams for Girls Basketball,” he said. “As difficult as the decision is to not offer a varsity schedule for a year, we agree with our Activities Department and Girls Basketball Coaching staff that we need to be more proactive in building long term solutions for the program. In this case, that means taking a step-back so we may develop our student athletes the right way. We remain committed to girls basketball and to student experiences.”
