Parkland girls basketball head coach Ed Ohlson is a pretty patient and laid-back kind of guy.

Those traits have served him well through the preseason as an already young group of players dealt with the usual bumps, bruises and illnesses all while missing players who were preoccupied with long playoff runs by their soccer and volleyball teams.

Just how young will the lineup be for the Trojans’ Saturday afternoon opener against Minersville? How about a lineup featuring just two seniors to go with two sophomores and a freshman?

Last season, the Lady Trojans (15-3) put together their ninth straight season with at least 15 wins and reached the finals of the Class 6A district playoffs before falling to Nazareth. Some key players from that team are now in college, including Sonya Shivok (RIT) and Lindsay Berger (Holy Cross), who led the team in scoring and rebounding in each of the past two seasons.

In addition to the four seniors who graduated, current senior Mo Olenwine was just cleared for noncontact practice after an injury and will remain out of the lineup until sometime in January at the earliest.

“We are very young, and we have had some struggles with some injuries and illnesses, but I was very pleased with how our two scrimmages went,” said Ohlson. “Really, we are in pretty good shape, and I like our depth. We’re two-deep at every position, even though we are very young.”

While Olenwine has been kept from practicing, she has not been kept from contributing. She is at practice every day, helping to get players ready for the season. Meanwhile, Zoe Wilkinson, also a senior, has taken control of the team on the court.

“Zoe will actually stop practice to tell players if we’re not doing things right,” Ohlson said. “The other day she stopped practice because she didn’t like what she was seeing and told her teammates ‘this is not how we do things.’ That type of leadership is important and then with Mo being there to reinforce things, our leadership is certainly strong. Lindsay and Sonya both had big personalities and we’re seeing those same types of big personalities coming out in Mo and Zoe this season.”

As a freshman, Talia Zurinskas averaged 8.1 points per game last season with a season-high of 23 in one game. Now, as a sophomore, Zurinskas has continued to progress on the court to give the Lady Trojans a three-point threat and a legitimate ballhandler.

As for the competition this season, Ohlson is seeing the usual suspects – Bethlehem Catholic, Easton and Nazareth – as the teams to beat. He also sees improving teams at Emmaus, Liberty and Freedom and one team that could make a big move in the EPC.

“I think Whitehall could be pretty good this season,” Ohlson noted. “They were getting tougher last season and I think that they will continue to get tougher and tougher. We don’t play them until late in the season, so we will know a little something about them by then and the same is true with Emmaus. We don’t get to see some of those teams until near the end of the schedule.”

Rivals Parkland and Emmaus do not step onto the same court until mid-January and the Trojans and Zephyrs do not meet for the first time until January 21. Meanwhile, the early schedule will see Parkland going up against a tough Minersville team in the opener and then hosting an improving Northampton team. Right after that, Parkland goes on the road to play at Nazareth in a rematch of the district finals last season.

“It would be kind of nice to not have a lot of the tougher teams up front on the schedule because we are so young,” Ohlson said. “It might take us a few games to really jell and get things together because of our young players and getting some of the other players in after the fall season. We will just go out and see what happens. We have talented players, so that’s not the issue. It’s more about just having time to work on things.”