t’s just about as close to starting from scratch as you can get.

Park returns just one of its top eight players from a year ago. She’s a good one, in leading scorer and versatile senior Tori Henderson who can play almost every position on the court. But she’ll have an entirely new cast of teammates to play with this winter.

To say the Wolfpack were a senior-dominated team last season is putting it mildly. Longtime head coach Stephanie Tolkinen must find replacements for starting point guard Sydnee Nelson (9.4 points per game), guards Edie Walton (3.9 ppg) and Emma Ambroz (5.7 ppg), starting forward Bryleigh Dana (7.9 ppg) and guards Finley and Morgan Leick (3.8 ppg).

Adding insult to injury, or maybe the other way around, junior Graycie Smith, who played in 22 games for the Wolfpack last season, averaging 4.2 points per game, will miss the season with an injury she sustained in soccer.

Park was 11-16 on the season a year ago. The Wolfpack went 8-10 in the Suburban East Conference, finishing tied for fifth.

The Wolfpack will build around Henderson this season, who returns with an 11.2 points per game average. No other player returns with more than three varsity games under their belts.

“Tori’s very versatile,” said Tolkinen, now in her 18^th season leading the Wolfpack team. “She can bring the ball up the court if we need her to. We know she can shoot the ball. She can play in the paint if we need to, she can play a high post. She’s very smart, she has a good basketball IQ.  We’re just going to have to look at what the opponent does and make our adjustments. Tori understands that she’s probably going to be one of those players that teams are going to try and eliminate her from our equation this year and that’s where she’s going to need her teammates to step up and show that they’re capable of scoring.”

New to expanded roles on the Park varsity will be players like junior point guard Hailey Kieffer, versatile junior Kenna German, 6-2 eighth grader Mesa Jameson, junior off guard Tenley Nelson. Park also has some promising ninth graders that may see time on the varsity.

“We do have some juniors though that are coming back that played on a really strong JV that we had last year,” said Tolkinen. “We kept those kids together intentionally knowing that we had so many seniors last year and so we kind of just let those kids continue to develop through the year last year playing JV in hopes that through the summer and coming in in the fall that they’d be able to step up and step into those varsity shoes.”

“It’s crazy, but we’re getting there,” said Henderson. “All the teams will be, who’s this team? We’re going to beat them, they’re nobodies, but we’ll prove them wrong.

“We have the skill, we just don’t have the connections yet,” Henderson added. “But we’ll definitely get there.”

New to the varsity will be Hailey Kieffer, Mesa Jameson, Tenley Nelson.

Team strengths should be shooting, speed and height, said Henderson.

“We’re really athletic and we do have speed,” said Tolkinen. “And the kids have a willingness to learn right now. They know we’re a little disjointed right now. But it’s day five. And as much as they’ve all been working through fall it’s a little different when you get in the gym with coaches and we’re really trying to focus on what direction are we going to go and we know it’s going to be baby steps. And we know that not everything is going to come together right away. Buy I think just the athleticism and their desire to learn and to improve is going to help a lot.

“And on a good night we can be a pretty good shooting team,” Tolkinen added. “We have some kids who have put a lot of time in the gym. It’s just a matter of can we play at the pace at the varsity level consistently and be able to knock down shots and then we hope as the season goes on we’ll be able to rely on our defense and some rebounding.”

Park opens the season at Hastings on Tuesday, Nov. 28. The Wolfpack’s first home game will be Tuesday, Dec. 5, when they host Forest Lake.