Recruiting season continues for Cottey

Webb City senior Ashleigh Houdyshell signs a letter of intent to play basketball at Cottey College next season. Houdyshell joins Nevada's Lacy Leonard as Southwest Conference players to sign with the two-year school. Houdyshell (center) to Ashleigh's left is her dad Tim Houdyshell and on the right is her mom Becky Houdyshell. Standing behind Ashleigh are Cottey coach Dave Ketterman (left) and Webb City coach Walter Resa (right).

By Joe Warren

Nevada Daily Mail

After landing the recruiting trifecta with Lacy Leonard on April 8, Cottey Comets basketball coach Dave Ketterman has not had time to let up.

While it's hard to top signing a player that can help you right away, is a good student and happens to be a local draw (Leonard), Ketterman has put his nose back to the ground, trying to sniff out more talented players that are falling through the cracks for one reason or another in his efforts to build the Cottey program.

One of those players was Ashleigh Houdyshell. The Webb City forward signed April 11 to play for the Comets. While Houdyshell will not blow anyone away with her statistical output (3.7 points and 3.8 rebounds per game), Ketterman feels she is a perfect fit for his program.

"Ashleigh is an outstanding athlete, and an excellent defender in the post," Ketterman said in a press release. "She loves to rebound, but we are looking to improve her scoring as well."

While Leonard and Houdyshell are the only two to sign on the dotted line so far, Ketterman has three more looming large on the radar screen.

Two recruits who visited this past weekend both are potential guards, with the ability to handle the basketball.

One was Maggie Wigness, from Casa Grande, Ariz.

Ketterman was really impressed with Wigness, saying she has the ability to play both guard positions.

"She handles the ball very well," Ketterman said. "She penetrates and can pull up and hit a jumper. That's something we haven't had."

A more pure point guard who also was in town recently was Abby Wolf, of Mustang, Okla. Wolf is a left-handed player who started for state semifinalists in Oklahoma last season.

Ketterman would love to have both players in Comets uniforms.

"I'd really like to sign a point guard and a shooting guard," he said. "We'd sure like to shore up the guard spot with (at least one) point guard."

Visiting Wednesday is another potential post player. Miranda Fields, of Vinita, Okla., is a 6-foot post who Ketterman would be ecstatic to sign.

"You can never have too many posts," he said.

Of course Ketterman is not limiting the Comets to just the three possible recruits, because nothing is a done deal until they sign.

"This now becomes the waiting game," he said. "We have to wait for the (NCAA) Division I schools, the Division II schools and the Division I junior colleges. They usually can offer partial scholarships and that kind of puts the players on hold (waiting to see what else is available to them).

"It's my job to sign those that are on hold."

Being at a smaller school, Ketterman has to contact a large number of athletes when trying to gauge interest in the school.

"We've got these three and I'm just scratching the surface on a number of others," he said.

Scratching the surface means conversing through e-mails and sometimes phone calls, trying to entice players to visit the Cottey campus.

Ketterman said that the college, known in the past more for its education opportunities than its athletic ones, is still trying to make a name for itself as a potential basketball school.

"We're still kind of an unknown," he said.