The Mexico girls want to play for championships this season.

The Lady Bulldogs lost the district title game a season ago to Moberly and believe they can have a better year than last year’s 12-16 campaign.

Head coach Makenzie Mudd said Mexico has four seniors, two juniors, two sophomores and three freshmen on its varsity roster of 11 this season. Mudd said the Lady Bulldogs will have a lot of speed like last season but wants to bring more defense unlike last year, when they matched the previous year’s defensive average of 47.6 points allowed per game.

“We’ve been working a lot in practice on defense,” Mudd said. “We want to find a strong defensive presence. Last year, we got a bit weak and gave up a lot of high-scoring games. We’re focusing more on shutting down the opponents and then making our own offensive opportunities, rather than focusing on just the scoring part.”

Mudd said good defense sparks offense, and the Lady Bulldogs do have some girls capable of scoring the ball. Claire Hudson is a senior and three-year starter that will be Mexico’s key returner that averaged 14.6 points to lead the team last year. She can also rebound at a 6.8 average last year and defend with two steals as an average.

Hudson’s younger sister and sophomore Grace Hudson is a returning point guard that can knock down shots from the perimeter, and juniors Landri Teel and Hannah Loyd are key post players returning. Senior Kenzie Taylor is another post player who is returning from last year’s varsity roster but should be available the whole season after dealing with recovery from ankle surgery last year.

Haley Perkins is a senior guard also back from injury, Mudd said, that adds to the senior group along with guard Kenley Jones, who brings a lot of that speed.

“We’re trying to force turnovers and use some of that speed that we’ve got to get to that end of the floor,” Mudd said.

Mudd said she’s “the same or even better potential” from this year’s Lady Bulldogs. When she looked at some of Mexico’s North Central Missouri Conference opponents, they graduated some key players from a year ago. Moberly, for example, lost three seniors that did a huge amount of its scoring.

Mexico will be adding a couple historically good programs to its non-conference schedule like Harrisburg and Southern Boone. Mudd hopes those more unfamiliar challenges will help acclimate everyone to varsity competition.

“We have a lot of girls with not much varsity experience, but I think that they have the drive to want to get better,” Mudd said. “I don’t think that’s going to be a huge problem for us for very long.”