Last year, the Lady Raider Basketball team made it to playoffs for the first time in 20 years.
This year, they’re ranked in state.
“We are currently #12 and we reached #11 earlier in the season,” two-year head coach Ramsey Ghazal said. “I was excited because the girls have worked extremely hard to earn this recognition.”
Senior Jennifer Sissel said being ranked “wasn’t one of our goals, but it was a nice surprise.”
“We worked so hard and never really stopped playing from last year,” Sissel said. “I knew we had the potential and just had to put it all together.”
Ghazal believes work ethic has helped the team get to this point.
“We worked extremely hard throughout the offseason,” Ghazal said. “We had a lot of pieces of the puzzle in place and then we got a big piece at the start of school with Taliyah Brooks moving back to Wichita Falls.”
Brooks, who moved to Rider from Pflugerville High School, near Austin, didn’t know what to think when she first saw the team practicing.
“The first day I came to Rider, I was a little worried because of how different it was from the school and city I came from,” Brooks said. “As the season progressed, I got a lot of faith in the team and I think if we keep working hard and playing well, we could make it to State.”
While they have made it to the playoffs, Ghazal says they aren’t finished yet.
“We have an excellent record, but this is a journey,” Ghazal said. “We are still a long way from our destination.”