LAYTON - What do the University of Utah football team and the Layton High School women's basketball team have in common this year? They are both following up undefeated, unprecedented seasons. Another thing they have in common is that they lost a lot of players from their championship clubs a year ago, and in essence are re-tooling. The Lady Lancers are looking at this year as a re-tooling phase, not the dreaded rebuilding phase. Apart from having only one starter back from last year in Ashley McFarlane and losing eight seniors, Layton also has a new head coach at the helm, Rob Reisbeck.

Reisbeck is beginning his first year as a high school head coach. He is not at all unfamiliar with the Layton program, though, since he served 11 years as an assistant to now departed head coach Van Price.

Reisbeck plans on using a lot of the same schemes and philosophies that he and Price used so successfully those years together.

"I learned a lot from Coach Price. We both agreed in almost all aspects of our coaching style and I don't plan to change anything really," Reisbeck said.

The Lady Lancers were a senior-led squad last year and that experience helped them win a state title, while going 24-0 overall.

Those seniors, along with McFarlane, played significant minutes during their sophomore and junior years also.

That same type of early-on experience is what Reisbeck is hoping to give some of his younger players this year.

"Ashley (McFarlane) is our leader. But I think we have some good young players who will get invaluable playing time this year. Hopefully, we can compete this year and that experience will make us a real force in years to come," Reisbeck added.

So far, Reisbeck has enjoyed his new role. The pressure of being head coach is much greater than that of an assistant, but Reisbeck feels he's handling it rather well.

"Assisting is a totally different world. Coach Price did a lot more than I ever had to worry about and I'm finding out these days how busy Coach Price's life actually was," Reisbeck said.

McFarlane will be anchoring the Layton backcourt this year and the Lady Lancers will need her leadership on and off the court for them to be successful.

McFarlane has now started three straight years at Layton and that experience should prove invaluable to the younger Lady Lancers this season.

"Fremont and Davis are probably the top two teams in Region 1 this season. Clearfield is always tough, and it will be interesting to see how the teams with the new coaches fare, us included," Reisbeck said when asked about the region and who Layton will really need to look out for this year.

Layton, Viewmont and Northridge have all had coaching changes this year while Weber is always the anomaly up north.

There aren't a lot of expectations for any of these four schools, and Reisbeck feels that is an advantage. "There's no pressure on any of the four schools, which is a good position to be in," Reisbeck said.

The Lady Lancers will see pretty quickly what they have. They played their first preseason game recently against Payson down in West Jordan. However, they don't play again until Nov. 29 at home against West.

Payson had a similar 2004 season to Layton's, going 24-1 and winning the 4-A state championship over Timpview. West was a middle-of-the-pack 4-A club last year, but was somewhat competitive in the old Region 5 last season.

Although the team is in a similar situation, Layton hopes this season can be a little more successful than Utah's football year. The Utes finished the season a disappointing 5-6 and the Lady Lancers want to definitely be better than a .500 team.

The fresh faces will have a lot to do with that and 2005 should be an exciting season to watch Layton women's basketball.



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