Opening against L.A. Valley College next Friday at 7 p.m., an exciting season awaits the women’s basketball team.

Last year, the women finished in second place in the South Coast Conference, just losing one game to the eventual champion Cerritos College.

However, coach Steve Shaw, who is entering his sixth season, is excited about the upcoming season with so much depth on the team.

“We have fourteen women in our roster and all of them have solid backgrounds,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be tough to narrow it down to the small group of women who play.”

“We haven’t had this much depth in our program in my previous six years of coaching at EC,” he added.

Another positive is that the women have more experience with five returning players and two bounce-back players from the universities.

Those five players either were regular starters or at least started part of the time.

“We have a lot of experience.” Shaw said. “We’ve got a great crew of outstanding young new players from high school and universities.”

A secondary strength is their size which should give them a great avantage against other teams in the South Coast Conference.

Sophmore Tawny Whitting is also excited about this year’s team, which should provide solid fundamental basketball.

“We run the floor and we get offensive boards,” Whitting said. “We play well structured defense. We are just a good team.”