When Rodney Strohl took over the Palmerton girls basketball program last year, he had one senior on the roster.

This year, it'll be a different story as all five starters will be seniors with experience who won't have to deal with the likes of playing in Class AAA if they qualify for the District 11 tournament again.The Lady Bombers are guard-forward oriented, and one of the returnees is Jade Farquhar, who was the Times News Player of the Year last season, averaged 15.8 points per game and had 900 career points.Add to that other returning starters Madison Mummey, Janel Tracy, Abby Reimer and Lindsey Nemeth, who came off the bench and also started a number of games, and there is definitely experience."Offensively we should be OK," Strohl said when talking about this season's expectations. "I'm still concerned about the lack of height and rebounding. We have to work hard on the defensive end again so we'll put a lot of pressure on our opponents."The Lady Bombers, who finished 14-9 overall last year, will have to stay healthy since there isn't much experience at all on the bench. Strohl will have to go to the JV squad from last year."We not only have to go to last year's junior varsity team as substitutes, but we'll also have to go to this year's JV team for help as well since the junior class doesn't have that many girls."We need to really focus on doing the little things correctly to stop the other team. I feel if we can keep our opponents in the 40-point bracket, we should be able to win a lot of games because we are pretty decent offensively."With the Colonial League adding Moravian Academy as a 13th member, the divisions have been switched from a North-South setup to East-West.Instead of the usual four-team league tournament at the end of the season, it will be a six-team format with the top two seeds receiving byes into the semifinals."Our division is solid, but you have to be one of those six teams," Strohl said. "Everybody starts out 0-0. I went through it back when I coached the first time. We were 18-0 and could've gotten beat. So you want to be one of those six teams. I'm not taking anyone lightly."This league is going to be pretty balanced, and there are a lot of good star athletes back on every team. There won't be one night off at all during the league season."Strohl said despite the senior group of starters, there are a couple of kids who can come off the bench to spell them.Another senior is 5-2 guard Susan Missal. Three juniors Trisha Sterling, 5-7 Erika Beers and 5-2 Lila Goodwill will also be in the mix. Then there are sophomores Makayla Smale (5-11), Tyra Wentz (5-5) and freshman Linnaea Leister (5-7), who may also see action."Until the bench gets some varsity playing time, we'll have to stay foul free," Strohl said. "If we get a lead and get to play some of those girls, it'll help."Last year we saw a triangle-and-two on Jade and Maddy, and then at the end of the year we lost Janel to the injury, which hurt us. We lost a couple of games by less than 10 points. I feel that was a big difference because Janel could have got us a couple of points here and there and she could have stopped some with her tough defense."These seniors have played together for a while and you see that cohesiveness out on the court. They like to run, they like to get a lot of shots off. So that's a big plus for us. And the other girls are coming along because they're practicing against this good group of starters."As far as a successful season, Strohl would like to see this group be one of the six teams to get into the league playoffs and then also have a chance at the district playoffs."Every coach out there wants to be in that boat," Strohl said. "And hopefully we can limit ourselves with injuries because we don't have that bench strength there yet, and go from there once."