Ridgewood senior Katherine Rasche is a team captain and a point guard on the girls basketball team, which makes her a proverbial coach on the floor.
Her graduation this spring will leave coach Amanda Timothy with a hard question to answer.
“Who is going to fill her shoes?” Timothy said. “I honestly don’t know.”
In her second season as the Rebels’ starting point guard, Rasche has established herself as the guiding force of the Rebels’ offense, helping the team transition from defense to offense, and she’s averaging 8 points per game in the second half of the year. She also has a player efficiency rating of 3.8, which is the best on the team. The metric, which takes into account statistics like points, rebounds and turnovers, is based on a scale of 10, according to Timothy.
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Rasche, a Harwood Heights resident, has shot 70 free throws this season, a by-product of her ability to drive to the basket and get fouled. She’s shooting 70 percent from the free-throw line and 50 percent from the field.
Rasche’s critical role on the Ridgewood girls basketball team was hard to foresee because as a freshman she decided to stop playing the game.
“I wanted to focus on school and soccer. None of my friends from grammar school were playing basketball. They were playing soccer,” Rasche said. “So I didn’t play my freshman year.”
Former Rebels standout basketball player Justyna Golab, who graduated in 2015, helped change her mind.
“I got to know (Golab), who bugged me every day to go to open gym,” Rasche said. “Finally, after talking to (Timothy), she made me realize what I would get from the experience and that I should do it. She convinced me.”
When she returned to basketball, Rasche wasn’t sure she wanted the ball in her hands.
“They saw me as a point guard, and I was used to that from middle school, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to play it,” Rasche said. “Playing the point is a lot of stress for me. But now that I’ve played it all three years, I wouldn’t want to play any other position.”
Rasche played on the sophomore basketball team as a sophomore and stepped into a starting varsity point guard position at the beginning of her junior year. Since returning, Rasche has more than met Timothy’s expectations for what a point guard should provide.
Timothy normally reserves the role of captain for seniors who have been in the program for four years, but Rasche was different.
“She has broken a lot of the traditions we have because of her hard work,” Timothy said. “She put so much time into the offseason that it cancels out the time she wasn’t here as a freshman.
“As a point guard, you have to have a lot of endurance and she has a very strong heart. She doesn’t give up on plays. She’s only about 5-foot-6, but it’s the fight in her that’s bigger than most players at her position.”
Rasche’s basketball career will be over at season’s end, and she’s glad she came back to the game.
“It was the best decision I made,” Rasche said. “Basketball has meant everything to me in high school. It’s my family.”
Gary Larsen is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
Twitter @Pioneer_Press