Metro Sports Report

Ollinger sparks No. 10 Lions with defense

Amanda Ollinger can have a big impact on a basketball game even when she's not shooting well from the floor.

She proved it Saturday night.

Ollinger made six steals and sparked Linn-Mar with her defense as the 10th-ranked Lions put the clamps on Muscatine, 49-29, in a non-conference game in the Linn-Mar gym.

Ollinger scored a game-high 20 points but shot only 7-for-19 from the field, including 1-for-6 on 3-pointers. The all-state forward got a lot of her points with her defense and steals.

Decker likes what he sees at Washington

Justin Decker saw hundreds of high school basketball games during his nine years as an assistant coach at Cornell and Coe when he was scouting players and knows talent when he sees it.

That's one of the reasons he's so excited about being the new boys basketball coach at Cedar Rapids Washington.

"We're about as athletic as you're going to see a high school team be in the state of Iowa," Decker said this week. "We're definitely going to try and use that to our advantage."

Decker played four years of college basketball at Cornell and served as team captain his senior year. He spent one year as the head coach at Riceville High School, then returned to Cornell as an assistant coach for four years before spending the last five seasons as an assistant coach at Coe.

Foote switches to boys at Cedar Valley

Craig Foote nursed the Cedar Valley Christian girls basketball program for seven years, taking them from the verge of extinction to having a respectable team with the great Shelby Hembera.

Now he's accepted a new challenge at Cedar Valley with the boys basketball team, taking the reins of a ballclub that won only two games last year.

Foote is not a martyr, however, and was ready to make the switch.

Foote was an assistant coach with the boys basketball teams at Marion, Lisbon and Cedar Valley before becoming the girls coach at Cedar Valley, so he has a strong background in boys basketball.

Secondly, his son Jackson is a freshman on the boys basketball team at Cedar Valley and this gives him a chance to coach his own kid.

Marion looks to replace 8 seniors

All basketball coaches like to have a big senior class on their team for the experience and expertise, but there's a flip side to the equation.

Once they graduate, they leave big holes to fill.

That's the case at Marion High School, where Coach Mike Manderscheid is trying to replace eight seniors who helped them fashion a 14-8 record last season.

So how do things look in practice without the eight seniors?

"It looks like we lost eight seniors," Manderscheid replied quickly, laughing.

It's not like the Indians are bumping into each other while they learn how to dribble and chew gum at the same time, but there have been a few growing pains at Marion. The first task is trying to replace all-star guard Craig Engle, who is now starting at Cornell College as a freshman.