Expectations change when a new standard is set.

For the South Whidbey girls basketball team, the expectations shifted from wins to fans. When wins were hard to come by, the Falcons focused on improvement and effort.

The Falcon girls ended their season on Feb. 4 at home against Granite Falls. It was the 16th loss of the season — a far cry from the team’s goal prior to the season.

Back in November, the program looked promising. Under first-year coach Andy Davis, along with some veteran assistants in Chad Felgar and Tom Felgar, 33 girls attended tryouts as the Falcons started the quest to improve the previous season’s record of 3-16.

Along the path, Davis lost four seniors, a junior and three sophomores. He added two freshmen, however, and tabbed Maia Sparkman and Madi Boyd as “bubble” varsity/junior varsity players.

“I think, most of all, the team highlight is that the team that we were at the beginning of the season was completely different from the team that we are at the end of the season,” said Falcon junior co-captain Makenzie Peterson.

“At the beginning of the season, we had no idea how to run one single play. By the end of the season, we were running three, four, five plays,” she said.

South Whidbey didn’t reach its original goal, and finished 2-19 overall.

The campaign started against Mariner, a 4A Wesco South school, and the Marauders came to South Whidbey and won 44-35.

Considering South Whidbey’s team had plenty of new faces in the lineup, and it was the season-opening game against a school with a much larger student body, the loss was a quality one. The Marauders finished their season 4-16 overall.

But that loss started an eight-game losing streak.

For the season, the Falcons averaged 29.9 points per game (played in Washington). The glaring disparity is in how many points South Whidbey allowed per game — 49.9. King’s and Archbishop Murphy, the top two teams in the Cascade Conference, averaged more than 50 points per game. After that, the scoring averages drop to 36, 47 and 43 points per game for the third-, fourth- and fifth-place teams.

Junior co-captain Jessica Manca highlighted the team’s progress. She spoke of the team’s chemistry and conditioning as the areas she saw the most improvement.

The Falcons’ first win came at the Seaside Holiday Classic basketball tournament in Seaside, Ore. In their last game of the tourney, the Falcons beat the Taft Tigers

45-25 — also the most points scored by South Whidbey this season.

“We definitely didn’t play as good as we could have,” Peterson said. “They were just so much lower than us in ability that it was so easy.”

The Seaside tournament caught South Whidbey off-guard. In its first game, South Whidbey lost 32-6 to the La Pine Hawks. Oregon high schools do not play with a shot clock and the strategy La Pine employed had the Falcons at a loss.

Losses didn’t bog down the Falcon players’ spirits, however. Once the game finished and they got on the bus or walked out of Erikson Gymnasium, the players moved on. Peterson noted the bus rides were a season highlight because the team bonded during the long travels.

“We were girls that never really talked before,” Peterson said. “We got together and bonded, had fun and good laughs.”

Senior reserve Lyna Nichols also said she appreciated the team chemistry, but in a different way.

“We had more attitude, which I like,” Nichols said.

After the school returned from winter break and in a new year, the team’s goal changed. Instead of winning more games than last season, the team wanted to fill the stands like the crowds seen at boys basketball games.

In the new year, the team found some life. Behind a grinding defensive slugfest, South Whidbey earned its first conference win against island-rival Coupeville, at Coupeville High School, 33-31.

Davis, who also teaches mathematics at South Whidbey, keeps a quote board in his classroom. Peterson is convinced that between 20 and 30 quotes uttered during the bus rides could be on Davis’ board. Falcon senior Gabby Fraser remembered one conversation between seniors Nichols and Emily Martin.

Martin, a vegetarian, ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the bus. Nichols asked how she could eat the PB&J and be a vegetarian. Martin calmly explained there wasn’t any meat in it. Nichols replied she was thinking of the cartoon show SpongeBob SquarePants and the jellyfish sandwiches they eat.

Wins were few and far between, but the offense continued to improve. It wasn’t enough against teams with established offenses and scorers. It was up to the junior co-captain trio of Peterson, Manca and Brittany Wood to corral morale. At times, it was easier said than done.

“It was a little bit hard at times,” Peterson said. “There were teams that we could’ve beat, but we didn’t.”

Davis also coaches football at South Whidbey, and wasn’t accustomed to coaching high school girls. His team appreciated seeing a different side of him, and applauded his ability to work with the girls.

“I was impressed with how well he did with the girls,” Nichols said. “He’s so used to manly guys and coaching them. For his first year working with girls and all the crying going on — there wasn’t a lot of crying, but there was some — he dealt with it pretty well.”

To be a top-three conference team — that’s South Whidbey’s goal for next season. Peterson said the team knows it requires work and dedication, but the team wants to turn around the program. It will take a concentrated focus on ball-handling skills, conditioning and more, she said.

It will also require a winning record, which Manca said is her team goal.

The team could have seven seniors next season, if the seven juniors on the roster this season return, which would bode well for the Falcons’ future.