Basketball: Five seniors and the underclassmen

Since then? Four straight early exits in the first round.

That doesn’t sit well with Broncos head coach Shawn Gilbert, and he’s hoping an experienced starting five — plus a weaker section — can lead to some late-season success for the 2009-10 Broncos.

“We have a very good mixture with the 10 we have on varsity right now,” Gilbert said.

The Broncos, who finished 12-15 last year and were upset by Mesabi East in the first round of the section tournament, return four senior starters — Kara Kennedy, Heaven Grinsell, Olivia King and Britni Hendrickson. The newest starter, sophomore Hanna Heibel, saw plenty of action last season and even tallied a team-high 17 points off the bench against Mesabi East in the final game.

“I think we’ll be pretty good,” Kennedy said. “We definitely have a lot of potential and we don’t have just one scorer anymore. The whole team can score.”

That one scorer last season was Danika Stelton, who graduated and moved on to Rainy River Community College. Stelton finished 11th all time in school history with 1,060 points. The Broncos also lost leading rebounder Ariel Arch to graduation.

“It’s going to be a challenge (in the post),” King said. “But not a lot of other teams have a lot of height.”

Or a lot of returning talent, according to Gilbert. On paper, he thinks the north subsection is down and up for grabs. He particularly likes his team’s chances, especially after an impressive summer.

“If that translates to anything, I think we’ll have a good year,” he said.

Also expected to contribute early are sophomores Morgan Bruess and Kelsey Foss, freshman Reva Renollet and Sophie Fredrickson and senior Emily Strand, one of five senior captains.

The Broncos open the season tonight at home against Ely.

“We’ll be scrappy,” Gilbert said. “And again, I think we’ll be up this year and a few teams will be down, so that should lead to a pretty good year.”