As she glanced over during an early-season practice on Ron Brown Court, Austin Danielson kept things in perspective.

This winter marks Year 3 of her tenure leading the Centralia High School girls basketball team. She knew it would be a difficult climb back to the upper echelon of the Evergreen Conference.

Yet the Tigers improved from one overall victory to three; from zero league wins to two. The first year to second year jump was noticeable.

“We’re still in the early stages of building a program that plays hard, comes out and competes and wants to push ourselves to get better,” Danielson said. “We’re hoping we make bigger strides. We’ll see what we’re made of pretty early.”

Centralia brings back several starters and key contributors plus will garner new energy from freshmen and sophomores in attempting to play meaningful games in February.

And March?

Brooklyn Sprague isn’t ruling anything out to this point.

“We’ve been building every year, so this year we can get better and better,” the junior said.

Finding a way to win close games was a double-edged sword for Centralia.

It lost a couple contests by under 10 points, but all three victories were by a combined 15 points.

Which Sprague believes can benefit them this winter.

“I have a positive outlook on the season,” Sprague said. “Just competing, working hard. As long as we’re in every game, that’s how we should judge (success).”

An all-league honorable mention a season ago, Sprague led Centralia in scoring and senior Payton Baumel hauled in the most rebounds. Those two plus Chloe Bonomi and Makenzie Erickson are viewed as the leaders of the group.

That quartet have grown up playing multiple sports together throughout their prep careers. Danielson is banking on that cohesion to springboard the Tigers out of the gate early.

“They know each other well and we hope that can translate to positive things for our team,” Danielson said.

Centralia won its season opener by 24 points over District 4 foe Hockinson fueled by 19 points by Sprague.

The two sophomores of Lily Negron and Aniela Gunn – who finished with 14 points in the victory – are posts while the pair of guards in Emma Ferch and Maddie Ahern are freshmen. The two classes have unleashed flashes of potential in practice.

Sprague has noticed the talent level is on par with other underclassmen throughout the EvCo.

“They are one of the better classes,” she said of the freshmen. “They have gotten a lot of benefits from (coach Katie Taylor).”

With Rochester dropping down a classification and Shelton bumping up to 3A despite remaining in the league, the last district tournament berth could come down to Aberdeen versus Centralia.

Matchups on January 7 and 23 may carry a lot of weight.

To Danielson, she doesn’t expect a step backwards.

“I do think if we work hard enough and stay consistent over the season, I do think we can be a playoff team very soon,” Danielson stated.