1998-1999 Lady Squires Basketball

Awards and Stats

Manchester Lady Squires

Sophomore Year

Awards

Varsity Letter

November 12, 1998 Ft Wayne News Sentinel Area Player to Watch

Wabash County All-Tourney Team

Wabash County Tourney MVP

1998-1999 Wabash All-county 1st Team

WJOT "Oldies 106" Player of the Game for 12/30/98

1998-1999 Warsaw Times-Union 2nd Team All-area

1998-1999 Northfield All-Sectional Team Honorable Mention

1998-1999 1st Team Three Rivers Conference

Profiled in 1/14/99 Fort Wayne News Sentinel PREPSPORTS

University of Tennessee Camp All*Star

STATS

Rebounds: 11 per game

Scoring: 18.6 per game

3-point%: .333

Free Throw%: .753

Field Goal%: .590

Steals: 1.7 per game

March 11, 1999 Wabash Plain Dealer
Eckert, Desper earn honors
By Chris Garner
WABASH, Ind. — After an exciting season of girls' basketball, capped off by an even more dramatic sectional tournament at Northfield, the announcement of Manchester senior Megan Eckert as Wabash County's 1998-99 Player of the Year seems almost anticlimactic. After all, not only is Eckert a three-time, all-county first-team selection, this also marks an unprecedented third consecutive time she has been given the top honor by the votes of the county's four coaches. "It's always nice to get individual awards," Eckert says, "but it's the success of the team that I'm most concerned with." Eckert isn't the only one on the team with all-county experience, but she is the only senior. Named along with Eckert were Manchester sophomore Jessica Hicks, Northfield junior Staci White and sophomore Abby Wilson, Southwood sophomore Brooke McKee and Wabash junior Gina Curtis. Heading up these half-dozen talented players is Northfield coach Steve Desper, named the county's Coach of the Year after leading the Lady Norse to an 11-11 season and the finals of the Class 2A Sectional 37. Desper, though only in his second year as head coach of the girls, just completed his 23rd year of coaching basketball at Northfield. "It's nice to be honored by your peers," Desper said of his selection by the other county coaches. "All of the accomplishments belong to the kids because they're the ones who worked hard and won some games for us." Eckert has been the Lady Squires' leading scorer for the past three years. As a sophomore, she averaged 19.4 points a game when she won the first of her three straight honors. Last season, Eckert's average dropped to 17.6 points per contest, but Manchester's prospects soared as the Lady Squires advanced all the way to the final game of the Logansport Semistate, as good as a Final Four finish in Class 2A. This season, Eckert scored a total of 521 points for an average of 23.7 a game, good enough to place her among the state's top 10 scorers, and fifth-best among all senior girls. She has a total of 1,462 points during her career at Manchester Eckert's 39-percent shooting from behind the 3-point arc ranked her second among Three Rivers Conference leaders, as did her 87-percent shooting at the free-throw line, where she made more foul shots (172) during the season than anyone else attempted. Eckert also ranked fifth in the conference in field goal percentage (48.5) and third in assists per game (5.7) while being moved to point-guard position to help the Lady Squires and first-year coach Keri Nichols finish third with a 4-3 record. Although Manchester failed to defend its sectional championship, the Lady Squires did repeat as county champions. "From Day One, Megan never questioned what I did," Nichols says. "She not only can score and play great defense, but she did a nice job of being a team leader." "We went far last year so there were some expectations that we had for this season," says Eckert, who is undecided about college. "But we had a great season. "She (Coach Nichols) brought a lot of new ideas in this year that are really going to help the program in the future." And what about Eckert's chances at a spot on the 1999 Indiana All-Star team? "All-stars... that's just icing on the cake!" Eckert says as she smiles. "If that happens, that's a lot of great girls to have a chance to play with." "You can never tell with the all-stars," says Nichols, who came to Manchester from 1998 Class 4A champion Martinsville. "I think Megan is obviously one of the top seniors in the state." Eckert wasn't alone as a unanimous choice. Wilson also received the four coaches' first-team support, as well as Nichols' endorsement for Player of the Year. Coaches were not permitted to vote for their own players for that honor. For Wilson, it marks her second straight first-team selection in her brief, but standout two-year career. Last year, she was the Lady Norse's second-leading scorer behind White. This year, with White hobbled by a preseason knee surgery, Wilson stepped into the breach and responded with 350 points, good enough for a 15.9 average. In addition to her scoring, Wilson also ranked sixth in the Three Rivers Conference in field goal percentage (46.9), sixth in rebounds per game (8.7) and fourth in steals with three per contest. Two other sophomores, Hicks and McKee, got strong support from the coaches. Both were second-team picks last year. Hicks led the conference with an average of 11 rebounds a game, and was second in the league in field-goal percentage at 59.1. She was also fifth in the conference in scoring and second on her team behind Eckert with an 18.6 average. McKee led the Lady Knights in scoring with an average of 12.5 points a game, and ended the regular season right behind Wilson in the Three Rivers Conference with 8.6 rebounds per contest. McKee also dished out 3.3 assists a game. Two juniors round out the six-girl team, and both are repeat honorees to the first team. Curtis, after averaging just more than eight points last year, improved that figure to 12 points this time around, and led the Lady Apaches with 25 3-point field goals. She also collected 36 steals and 35 assists from her guard position. White began the season watching from the sidelines and ended up playing in 17 games as she scored 12.6 points per game for. White also made better than 36 percent of her 3-point field goal attempts while hitting more than 73 percent of her foul shots and handing out 3.3 assists per contest. The second team is led by Wabash's Tara Jackson, followed by Southwood seniors Laura Kinder and Megan Bozarth, Manchester senior Sherri Wagoner, Northfield's Jamie Barton and Wabash's Nikki Randas. Jackson, a 5-foot-2 sophomore, led the Lady Apaches with a 13.9 points-per-game scoring average, and also handed out a team-high 48 assists and made 43 steals. Kinder finished as the Lady Knights' second-leading scorer behind McKee with a 7.6 points-per-game average, and was also second in assists with 52 and steals with 36. Bozarth led Southwood with 46 steals while finishing second on the team with 151 rebounds, and also chipped in 5.6 points a game. Wagoner was the Lady Squires' third-leading scorer at 4.8 points a game while collecting 35 assists and 20 steals. Barton, a 5-foot-11 sophomore, collected an average of 6.8 rebounds per game for the Lady Norse, good enough for 12th place in the TRC. Randas, also a sophomore, led Wabash with 122 rebounds, and was second on the team with 40 steals and third in scoring with 159 points.

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