This year’s Swampscott girls basketball team has its work cut out

There’s always room for improvement, but the Swampscott High girls basketball team will have its work cut out trying to out-do last year’s performance.The Big Blue are coming off a 19-1 regular season record and a 21-2 overall mark that saw them reach the Division 3 North semifinals, where they lost to Pentucket. Last year marked the fourth consecutive season that Swampscott won at least 18 games.Of course the Big Blue will be minus several key players from that team including Gwen Luke, Tara Driscoll and McKinley Tennant, all starters, and Stephanie Miller, who came off the bench. Luke is now playing at Roger Williams College, Driscoll at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and Tennant at Wesleyan.”We lost a lot of experience,” Swampscott coach Jack Hughes said, noting that three of them were four-year varsity players.The good news, however, is that the well hasn’t come close to running dry. Hughes returns his two leading scorers, juniors Tara Nimkar and Allie Beaulieu. Nimkar, a forward, averaged about 15 points per game and Beaulieu was good for about 12.5 poing per game.Junior Marissa Gambale didn’t start, but she picked up considerable playing time at guard, particularly as the year went on, and twin sisters Jenna Mazzaferro (a senior forward) and Janelle Mazzaferro (senior guard) return, although Janelle will miss the first few weeks with a knee injury. The Mazzaferros, Nimkar and Beaulieu are all captains.The returning contingent also includes back-up center Tara Gallagher and senior forwards Katherine Gorham and Casey Babbit. Sophomore guards Kara Gilberg and Jen Cleary are up fro the junior varsity. Two freshmen, Lisa Gambale and Meghan Shea, round out the varsity.”This is a very athletic team, a very fast team,” Hughes said.Hughes said it’s a little different this year. In recent years he’s had quite a few experience players returning. This year he said he has to go back a bit and take things a little more slowly.”So far things are going pretty well,” Hughes said. “I think the expectations of kids are still high. Some of these kids put in a tremendous amount of time in the off-season. This is a confident group.”