When Community opens the 2025–26 season Nov. 22 against Normal West at home, head coach Mr. Dave Feeney won’t measure the Iron against last year’s 27–7 team. He won’t measure them against the four straight Intercity titles either.

What he wants instead is a reset.

“I don’t want them coming into the season worried about what last year’s team did, or what two years ago did,” Feeney said. “I want them focused on their own journey… we’re not trying to live up to anybody else’s expectations.”

That message frames the Iron’s identity—be a bison.

“A cow runs away from the storm,” Feeney said. “A bison faces the storm head-on.”

It’s a bison’s mentality Feeney wants this year’s team to carry—to play “fearless,” to not just face a challenge, but “embrace the challenge.”

As bison, Feeney hopes this squad can step out of the shadows of last season’s senior-heavy, experienced roster that reached the IHSA 4A sectional semifinal and finished third in the Big 12.

Rebuilding with “inexperienced veterans”

That bison mindset matters now, with experience thin where production used to be.

Despite returning eight seniors, Community graduated a class responsible for much of last season’s scoring, rebounding and interior defense.

All five of the team’s top scorers are gone: Kenna Malinowski (11.0 points per game), Rayna Powers (9.8), A’Meah Lester (8.4), Marco Reynolds (7.8) and Camry Fisher (5.2).

Powers, Reynolds, Malinowski and Lester handled much of the work on the glass for the Iron last season.

That senior core accounted for over 73% of the Iron’s scoring last season and more than 55% of the team’s offensive and defensive boards.

Only three returners—Hayley Michels, Zoey Wilde and Ashlyn Welborn—logged meaningful varsity minutes in 2024-25 on the way to the team’s IHSA 4A Sectional semifinal appearance.

That blend, Feeney said, puts Community in “a weird position of having veterans, but yet also being a little inexperienced.”

But Feeney expends the seniors to steer the herd.

Michels, the lone returning starter and Community’s most experienced ballhandler, averaged 4.9 points per game last season, good for sixth on the team.

Averaging 2 rebounds per game, .8 steals and 1.8 assists, Michels brings strength, on-ball defense and the ability to “set the table for others,” Feeney said—traits that surfaced during her late-season rise to the starting lineup.

Wilde added 2.3 points per game, often as a spacing guard, while Welborn contributed 2.0 points per game in 29 appearances, giving Community another ballhandler who has seen varsity speed.

After a season behind all-conference standouts, seniors Ava Turner, Brooke Niekamp, Addison Taylor and Ella Michalak are poised for larger varsity roles—players who, Feeney said, “haven’t really played a lot… but absolutely represent what our program is about.”

A smaller, perimeter-heavy roster

While last year’s roster featured multiple interior scorers and rim protectors, players like Reynolds and Malinowski, this season, Community returns only one player above 5-foot-10.

Rebounding, Feeney said, is “a major concern heading into the season.”

The Iron plan to meet that issues head-on, offseting that lack of size with shooting depth and by trading twos for threes.

Turner, Michels, Wilde and juniors Taylor Williams, Lily Witzig and Sophia Mack give Community “six kids that can shoot the three.”

As a freshman last season, Feeney said, Williams made 10 threes in a single JV game—exactly the perimeter punch Community needs after Malinowski graduated with a single-season program record 92 3-pointers.

With an arsenal of credible 3-point threats, Community plans to “spread the floor,” Feeney said, creating “gravity”—the defensive attention shooters draw— and generate catch-and-shoot opportunities instead of asking guards to manufacture shots.

That game plan can punish zone defenses and late help.

The Iron aren’t completely without size this season; sophomore forward Jocelynn Schilb, a 6-foot-1 transfer expected to help in the post, joining 5-foot-10 sophomore Annie Oliver, who contributed during summer workouts.

Feeney said the staff will mix lineups depending on matchups.

“There’ll be times where we have bigs on the floor, and times where we just go small and make [opponents] adapt to us,” he said.

Preparing at game speed

With only 17 practices before taking the court in their first contest, Feeney said many roles remain unsettled.

To ramp up their readiness, the Iron introduced a boys practice squad to provide consistent, game-speed pressure—especially on the glass.

“If you don’t box a guy out, he gets the board because he’s bigger and more athletic,” Feeney said.

The squad allows Community to treat segments of practice like live-game film, “streamline” drills and give more players meaningful reps without sacrificing touches for the top of the rotation.

Feeney’s philosphy is clear: if bison face the storm, practice, then, needs to feel like one.

Culture as the competitive edge

Feeney’s emphasis on culture—“life teammate,” communication, composure—remains a centerpiece.

“One thing that I love is that we have a big senior class that so far has made those examples really well,” Feeney said. Seniors echo coaching points, set expectations in all-program practices and, in Feeney’s eyes, model what Iron basketball should look like.

“Ultimately, that stuff comes from your players,” he said. “A bunch of coaches will just talk, but your players actually live it, and they represent what you’re actually about.”

That leadership, he said, will determine how quickly a roster full of new contributors can stabilize.

“I’m not as interested in just the scoreboard,” Feeney said. “There are different ways to win… we want to win the response.”

That’s the daily version of the motto—habits before wins.

Intercity: a measuring stick, not a mandate

The schedule won’t ease the Iron into the season, with Community playing four games in a span of five days.

Despite entering the Intercity tournament on a nine-game winning streak over Normal West and a run of four straight tournament titles, Feeney has told every team the same thing: Intercity is “glorified practice.”

This year, West will already have played three games before facing Community—an advantage in experience, but also an opportunity for the Iron to study film.

Intercity, Feeney said, is just “a statement of where we are on November 22,” Feeney said. “Then we want to use what we learn to get better.”

Intercity is just the first storm to face, not an accolade for the Iron to chase.

After opening against West, Community will face Bloomington, U-High and Central Catholic; each a team, Feeney said, which poses “its own unique challenge” given the contrasting styles and quick turnarounds.

Beyond Intercity, the forecast doesn’t clear as Community face a treacherous nonconference slate that includes Edwardsville and O’Fallon and conference powerhouses Richwoods and Peoria Notre Dame, defending Big 12 champions.

The road ahead

This is one of the smallest, least experienced rosters of Feeney’s 14 seasons, but it resembles many of his most successful groups: guard-driven, fast and committed to defending.

“By the time the season ends,” Feeney said, “we’re definitely going to be that standard and be a really good basketball team.”

The Iron open the Intercity Tournament Nov. 22 at 6:30 p.m. against Normal West.

Catch the game on NCHSinkspot.com, with broadcast coverage starting at 6 p.m.