After a season in which they had one of the toughest schedules in the state, Perry’s women’s basketball team found itself in unfamiliar territory at the end of the season – fighting for postseason contention. The last time the Lady Pumas played in the postseason was five years ago and today they are the closest they have ever been to making the cut again in a long time.

The team is currently 6-15 and ranked 27 in division one, which says a lot about all the work they have been putting in this season because they have not come this close to these standings in a while. Their growth this season has been immense and they are shedding the title they were previously given as a “young team”.

“The seasons going really well, this is the first time in the past five years where right now we’re ranked where we would make the state playoffs,” says Senior Jenna Reynolds.

The Lady Pumas have come a long way. For the past few years, they have struggled to find their footing and their rankings showed that. The last time that they truly dominated on the court was their winning 2009-2010 season when they were 21-9. Although, they haven’t achieved these numbers in  a while, the girls have significantly improved and made more gains this year than they have in the past 5 combined.

It is worth mentioning that the Lady Pumas’ competition has been top level. The team has had a tough roster this season, playing against highly ranked teams such as Highland, Hamilton, and Desert Vista-ranked number 1-and retiring with multiple losses. However, despite the losses, in spirit they are really gains. Games in the past, for example when they lost 40-94 to Desert Vista, were experience boosters. The team was able to learn from mistakes and take that skill into the next game. “I think it shows that..we have the fight to win and prove that…girls’ basketball at Perry is not a joke and that we’re a real team,” Reynolds says.

“As long as we’re in playoffs, we’re happy,” Serrano says. “We worked so hard and I believe we’re going to get what we deserve.”

Unfortunately for Serrano and the Lady Pumas, a certain incident has made their playoff appearance questionable. Their record was 7-17 and 24 in the division  but it seems that the girls dropped 6 spots within a few days. This is due to the team having to forfeit 3 of their wins for having an ineligible player on the court.”We’re in the process of appealing those wins,” says athletic director Jennifer Burks.

There will be a phone conference held between the executive board for the AIA in which questions will be asked and they will ultimately vote on if the team had done what they should have and deserve the appeal.

Burks says that its hard to tell if the girls would have made it into the playoffs if the incident had not have happened. “They would be what we call a bubble team, so we don’t know if they would actually get in or not. It’s hard to say whether those wins would be enough to put them back into the top 24 or not.”

Supersectionals are where the top teams compete for playoff rankings. After the top teams are ranked in supersectionals, they compete against the lower playoff-qualifying teams in playoffs. Supersectionals are going on currently and Burks believes that the team would not have made it into the supersectionals but they definitely can benefitted from them. This is working in their favor because they supersectionals break is giving the team time to appeal.

As for now, it is just a waiting game. The girls are still waiting to hear from the executive board on whether or not they’ve decided to give them the appeal. They have continued practice. If they get the appeals they can get as much as all their wins back.”How ever many wins they chose to give us back, if any..that gets recalculated into the power rankings and then we’ll just have to see how the numbers shake out after that.”