With a new season on the horizon, Austin will have to replace most of last year’s backcourt from a team that played in the Class ‘AAA’ girls basketball state tournament.

The Packers graduated four key seniors, and Hanna Middlebrooke is the team’s lone returning guard. But the adjustment of senior Tina Vorphal’s role will help shore up the position.

“We’ll be able to get the ball inside, but we’re gonna need some help for the three-point shooting.” Austin head coach Gary Peterson said. “We’ve lost some of our outside shooters and we’ve told Tina that she might play a little bit more at the guard this year.”

Vorphal, who averaged 11 points, seven rebounds, two assists, and two steals per game last year, is prepared for the role as she hopes to be part of another state tournament qualifying team.

“I’m really looking forward to (playing guard),” she said. “I’ve been working from the outside a lot this summer, so we’ll see how it goes.”

Middlebrooke, who averaged 4.1 points per game off the bench last season, is confident that the new guards — which include Whitney Heiny and Kayce Lukes — will hold their own.

“We have a lot of people on the bench who can come in and fill the roles that we lost. It’s just a matter of us supporting them every day and getting them in the routine,” she said. “We’re looking forward to another strong year. Last year was a booster and it was a big goal to get to state.”

Up front, the Packers should be solid as Kathryn Gavin, Krista Viehauser, who averaged 5.6 points and 4.4 rebounds off the bench last season, and Rebekah Aase, who averaged 6.3 points and 5.7 rebounds last year, all return.

“I think we’re gonna have some decent size and they can run pretty good. Rebekah and Krista can both run. You’ve got to be able to run to play this game nowadays,” Peterson said. “If teams play us a lot of man-to-man, they might have some matchup problems when we’ve got four of our bigger kids out there.”

Peterson said the Packers will have to stay unselfish this season as they were last year, and ideally he would like three players to reach double figures in scoring every night.

“The girls have been working hard. The potential is there,” he said. “We had great team chemistry last year, and right now we’re in the process of figuring out our team captains.”

The toughest thing Peterson had to deal with in this year was that 21 upperclassmen tried out for the team.

“That’s the most we’ve had in a long time,” he said. “We put 12 on varsity and as the season goes on we’ll look and see how people develop and by tournament time we’ll have 18.”

Austin tied for second in the Big Nine last season and John Marshall was first. The Rockets should be tough again as they return a lot of talent, but the Packers hope to be in the mix of things.

Austin opens its season at New Prague Dec. 2 at 7:30 p.m. The Packers knocked off the Trojans in overtime in the Section 1AAA title game last season.

“That’s gonna be a good test to open up with. They only lost three games last year and two of them were to us. We’ll be fired up,” Peterson said.