In high school sports, part of being a senior is being the experienced, oldest group of a team. Typically it also makes a player eligible for being a captain. While that had always been the tradition for the Lady Rebels basketball team at Juanita, this year it changed.

Returning head coach Sam Lee said this year he talked, prior to the season, with the three seniors and asked them what they wanted to do. They decided to let the team vote, a testament to the fact the team is friends on and off the court.

“To me that’s a huge, huge deal in girls sports that they made that choice,” said the coach. “I thought it was a very mature, adult choice for them to make.”

The team ended up voting in seniors Kate Cryderman and Taylor Paddock as the captains, helping to lead the team to a 3-1 start on the season.

With six returning from last year’s district bound team, the Rebels want to get past that first round at Bellevue College this season and are ready for a banner. Lee said they are helped by the fact that the team is made up of girls who don’t just play together, but hang out together.

“They genuinely like each other. They hang out together all year long, they really like each other,” said the coach. “They spent probably at least 150 to 200 hours of just straight core conditioning in the off season, they did it as a group. It wasn’t that I told them, they just wanted to do it. They worked on their game and at being better basketball players. They’ve done that as a group and that’s the culture they decided they wanted.” The players agreed, saying how well they get along shows on the court and plays into their success so far this season.

The culture of winning the team has taken on and hopefully, Lee said, will serve them well in the regular season, in a league that faces some of the top teams in the state.

“I think we’re going to have to take advantage of every opportunity,” he said of what it takes to win in KingCo. “Those two aside (Sammamish and Interlake) we’re all pretty equal, I think our 3A league is going to be pretty dynamite. I don’t know if any team is going to go through with one loss or two losses. I’d like to go undefeated like every other coach, but it’s going to be a very nice league to be in, it’s going to be super competitive for at least 10 of the 12 league games. I don’t think there’s a great deal of difference between all of us.”

Those tough games from the beginning of the season will certainly come in handy as the post season rolls in.

“I think it’s a heck of an advantage for Metro and that we have over WesCo because when you get into the real close games and the pressure is on we’re already have played probably 10 games like that in our regular season,” said the fourth year head coach. “So we’re going to be seasoned for that and that should really help in the season. If we can all stay healthy. We get five spots to districts this year again. In our district it’s going to be interesting because the top two teams should be Cleveland, the returning champs and Holy Names. That leaves three other spots for the rest of us and that might be kind of interesting.”

The team said they are excited to face Mount Si, and for another shot at Lake Washington, a team the Rebels beat 46-35 last week. The girls said they wished they still played Inglemoor, another rivalry school, but schedules this season didn’t make it possible.

Lee said for him beating Mercer Island would be huge, as it’s a team the Rebels haven’t beaten since he started coaching again at Juanita.

“Jamie (Prescott, the Mercer Island head coach) has a great team every year,” he said. “We’ve taken them to overtime, we’ve gotten blown out by them, that’s everything we could do. It’s the only team we haven’t beaten yet. That’s on my personal to-do list.” He added he was impressed by the Mount Si team in an early season game as well.

Despite the snowstorm that set all the winter sports teams back a week during Thanksgiving, Lee said the team has been focused on their game pace and the mental side of the games.

“We’ve focused a lot on defense and just the mental aspect of the game and how to prepare,” he said.

The girls on the team know what they want out of the season – a banner on the wall in the high school gym.

“I’d like to see these kids put a banner up on the wall,” said Lee. “It has to be a league deal, has to be a district deal and obviously would have to be a state deal. If we stay healthy and continue to play well together I think we have as decent a shot as any other team in the league. Will it happen? I hope so, but I know this: At the end of the day I’m not so concerned about the wins and the losses. I want these kids to experience something and make it there. They are making it their culture, it’s not mine and it’s great. These young girls have decided what they want and they want to win and that’s great.”

The Rebels will host Kent-Meridian in a non-conference match on Dec. 22 at 4:45 p.m. and will also host Lynnwood on Tuesday, Dec. 28 at 11 a.m.