NWC WOMEN HEALTHY FOR CONFRENCE OPENERS

BY SETH ROMSA TRIBUNE SPORTS WRITER
Courtesy of the Powell Tribune

After an injury-filled first semester the Northwest College women's basketball team is hoping for a strong start after the winter break, hitting the court with nearly all eligible players healthy to start Region IX North action at home this week.
"We're as healthy as we can be at this point," coach Cody Helenbolt said. "Still got some minor stuff that we're dealing with, but we practiced with 13 today (Tuesday), we haven't had 13 at a practice since before break. We're trending in the right direction, cautiously optimistic about it."
Coming out of winter break, the Trappers were unable to get on the court in the new year until this point, which Helenbolt hopes will not lead to a poor performance in the team's first game since Dec. 18.
"We're just gonna have to jump back into it and see. I'm a little nervous about it, not having a game, but at the same time we were pretty beat up," Helenbolt said. "It's been nice to ease back into it, we've just got to be ready to go because conference is a different animal than the preseason."
In the first half of the season the Trappers finished with a 12-6 record, taking on a number of difficult teams in the process which Helenbolt believes will help his group heading into Region IX play.
Due to those difficult contests, Helenbolt believes his team still has a ton of room to grow, boasting a large number of freshmen on the roster. 
"We have a lot of potential, but we're still really young, one of the youngest teams. We just have to be able to step up our intensity level," Helenbolt said. "The good news is we played a really difficult preseason schedule. I think that is going to help us a lot because some of the games we played were against Eastern Arizona, Arizona Western, Williston (State), some of those teams were really good and highly ranked … That's going to help us a lot going into conference season."
Northwest hits the court at home for Region IX action, starting with a game today (Thursday) against Laramie County Community College (8-8) at 5:30 p.m.
The Trappers then take on Eastern Wyoming College (10-7) at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Continuing the busy week on Wednesday the Trappers take on Western Wyoming Community College (13-5) at 5:30 p.m.
"We're excited to start off at home and get three home games right away," Helenbolt said. "In the next two weeks we have four of our six home games that we have left, so we've got to come out strong. Be ready to protect our home floor, play our game. I'm pretty confident in our team if we just play the way that we're capable of playing."