CHERRY TWP - It takes all kinds to make a team. Moniteau's girls basketball squad is a testament to that concept.

The Warriors enter Friday night's District 9 Class AA playoff game against Curwensville at Clarion University having won 12 out of their last 13 games.

They are doing so with 5-foot-6 sophomore Amy Gladd starting at forward, 5-8 junior Kristen Baronetski nearly averaging a double-double inside and a senior, Laken Burk, adapting to the sixth-player role.

"Everyone's done her part," senior point guard Natalie DeMatteis said. "As a team, we make it work.

DeMatteis and junior guard Alyssa Deal are at the heart of it. Both are three-year starters who have had double-figure scoring averages each year and have combined to drain 75 3-pointers this season.

"They're competitors," Moniteau coach Mark Yeager said. "It doesn't matter what our team history is, how many games we've won before. They are enthusiastic athletes who strive to win every game."

They've been doing so lately, but it's taken a while. The Warriors were 12-13 a year ago, 11-13 in 2002-03. In Yeager's first year - the season after Moniteau's 2001 District 9 championship - the team lost 17 of 22 games.

"We graduated just about everybody. Lindsay Minnear was the only holdover with any kind of experience," Yeager said. "I knew we'd have to pretty much start over."

DeMatteis also is a three-time all-conference softball player who is looking to play at the NCAA Division III level for two years before transferring to a West Coast school.Deal placed fifth in the state in the 1,600 meters last spring and qualified for the state meet in cross country last fall. She didn't compete because of a sore hamstring."I didn't want to risk tearing it right before basketball," Deal said. "I like the other sports, but every sport I do is geared toward basketball."While his team suffered through three consecutive losing seasons, Yeager saw brighter skies ahead."I said all along that Natalie's senior year would be our next chance to go after the (district) title," he said.Even this year, however, the Warriors dropped five of their first nine games."We have some young players, some new faces, and it took us a while to get on the same page," DeMatteis said. "Once we put together a couple of wins, we just took off.""Execution, execution, execution," Yeager said. "It's been little fundamental things. We're cutting better, boxing out better, playing better defense."Our last two games were probably our best two games. That feels good going into the playoffs."Baronetski scored 16 points and recorded 14 rebounds in a recent 61-52 win over Cranberry, the top-seeded team in the district."Kristen has to play virtually every minute of every game because we rely on her inside play so much," Yeager said. "And (senior) Jenna Beatty has been an unsung hero, averaging about nine points per game down the stretch and rebounding well."Some of our younger girls haven't developed as quickly as I hoped, so Laken Burk has been our prime bench player. We're not very deep," he added.And it doesn't hurt to have a scorer like Deal, who cracked the 1,000-point plateau as a junior and has hit 100 3-pointers as a varsity player.Barring injury, Deal will break Dee Slater's career scoring record of 1,157 points at Moniteau - a mark that has stood for 21 years - early next season."I'll trade a district championship for that any day," Deal said. "But I'd love to have both."Since Deal and DeMatteis have been starters for so long, they've formed a rapport on the court."We have a lot of connection plays between us," Deal said. "When Natalie drives to the hoop and looks to dish off, she knows where I am.""Alyssa's more mature now," DeMatteis said. "She's become more of a team player."Deal agreed."I've learned how to get the other players involved in the scoring," she said. "It's harder to defend us that way."We want to go as far as we can. We'll take what we can get."