HELENA — Helena Capital girls basketball coach Katie Garcin-Forba challenged her team to make 10,000 shots this summer.
"I think one of the things we identified was we needed to be more consistent shooters, and we needed to be able to focus in on position specific scoring. And so we redeveloped it about three years ago for our position-specific kids. And really, it was just trying to be more efficient in our offense, but I also wanted them to compete with each other. And see, okay, this person made 4,000 shots this month, I better make 4,500 the next month, and just to try and kind of create some competitive atmosphere with the summer work that we do," Garcin-Forba said.
Junior Taylor Sayers went well beyond the 10,000 mark, making 20,425 shots throughout the summer challenge.
“She is the epitome of Lady Bruin basketball and what we want in our kids. She's an amazing student, 4.0. She's a team first kid. But she's also one of the hardest workers that we have in the program. And I don't know how many times between myself, my assistant coaches, her mom [Rachelle Sayers] over at Carroll, she's asked to just get in the gym, and she's somebody that has become very intentional in her workouts. She comes in very focused, she is perfectly content being the only person in the gym just getting shots up. And I think that's what makes her so unique,” the head coach said.
With both her mom coaching and her sister playing at Carroll College, there’s no shortage of motivation in the summer months in the Sayers household.
“She inspires me because she's a really good player and I want to follow in her footsteps and try to have success in the future with basketball. My sister motivated me the most she pushed me every day and told me to get in the gym all the time,” Sayers said.
Sayers hopes her time in the gym pays off this coming season.
“I hope to play a big role because we graduated some seniors so I hope that I can help contribute to our continued success,” she said.
Her coach confirmed that she will be stepping into that big role she’s hoping for.
“The goal is always just to be better than we were the last year, and we return a lot of talented kids. Taylor's gonna be a huge piece of that for us. She had an amazing summer. I'm really excited to see what she'll give our team just scoring wise and offensively,” Garcin-Forba said.
