The early-season schedule didn’t provide much of an indication of just how well Mark Ackerman’s girls basketball team played during the 2012-13 season. After all, Clear Creek started out 3-4.
It didn’t help that the team suffered the defection of its top two scorers from a season ago — Haleigh Washington via a transfer to Doherty High School and foreign exchange student Paula Fernandez.
Yet, while Clear Creek didn’t quite match its 18-6 record from 2011-12, the Lady Golddiggers secured a third straight winning season. To do so despite overcoming such roster changes and injuries is why Ackerman has been named the Clear Creek Courant Coach of the Year for the 2012-13 school year.
“It started out rough. We had some pretty good competition that we played prior to the Frontier (League). Once we got situated with that and got into league play, then things started rolling out,” Ackerman said. “Really, it was just good basketball from then on out pretty much.”
Clear Creek finished the season 16-7, including 10-1 in the 3A Frontier League. The Lady Golddiggers won 13 of 14 games once they got into conference play to reach the 3A Frontier League district tournament finals. The team’s only two losses against league competition came against the Denver School of Science and Technology.
Of Clear Creek’s other five losses, four of them — Colorado Academy, Gilpin County, Lutheran and Olathe — were against teams with winning records. The loss to Olathe was in the first round of the 3A state tournament, and Lutheran placed third in the 2A tournament, suffering its only loss in the state semifinals.
Senior Ally Huff and sophomore Anna Schwecke led the charge by averaging 11.8 and 10.1 points per game, respectively. Huff, who also had a team-high 64 steals and 45 assists, did so despite a late-season right thigh injury. Schwecke also had a team-high 160 rebounds and 52 blocked shots.
While Ackerman will have to find replacements for Huff, fellow senior Courtney Joyce and foreign exchange student Laura Cortiz Feal, Schwecke will return along with fellow junior Kaitlin Vieweg to lead a team that was predominately underclassmen — nine of the 11 players on this year’s roster were either freshmen, sophomores or juniors — in 2013-14.
— Michael Hicks