INJURIES HIT LADY CARDINALS EARLY AND OFTEN

If the Woodland girls basketball team can ever get everybody healthy, then coach Harley Eddleman believes the Lady Cardinals can eventually field a competitive squad this season.

But getting people healthy was one of the Lady Cardinals' primary problems through much of the preseason."It's been kind of the walking wounded for us I guess," said Eddleman with a laugh. "We've had a lot of people banged up, with a few ankles and some other things."Everybody is working real hard, but it's really hard to tell how we'll be because we need to get everybody back. It's hard when you barely have enough players to scrimmage."Woodland went 3-14 last season and Eddleman believes the Lady Cardinals might be able to scratch out a few more victories this year."I think we'll be competitive. We have a little more size this year, which should help us," he said. "We won't be one of the better teams, but we're hoping to win a few more than we did last year. Anything else would kind of be gravy."The Lady Cardinals return two full-time starters from last season in 5-foot-8 senior Sarah Booth and 5-7 sophomore Diana McCall. Booth, a standout on the Woodland volleyball team that qualified for the Class 2A Final Four this year, is Woodland's top returning scorer at about eight points per game.

Another player with varsity experience is 5-8 senior Christi Lindley, who started some games last season."Those are our three main players from last year's varsity team and we'll be counting on them quite a bit," Eddleman said.

Woodland will also be counting on four other players, two where were on last season's JV and two who did not play a year ago. Up from the JV are 5-10 junior Makesha Massa and 5-7 junior Alisha Trentham. Newcomers are 6-foot senior Lilo Whitener and 5-11 junior Jessica Bollinger, who were both also volleyball standouts.

The Lady Cardinals open the season in their own tournament Dec. 8-11.