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Jan. 30—WAGNER, S.D. — By the time Ashlyn Koupal crosses half court, the defense is already in her pocket.
Players face guard her when she doesn't have the ball, and trail her through every move she makes. Another defender waits in the lane. Sometimes there's a third, hovering just close enough to remind her that nothing will come easy.
For most players, it's suffocating. For Koupal, it's just another night on the basketball floor.
"I just trust my coaches that we're going to have offensive sets that we can run to try and get everybody involved when they are focusing on me a bit more," Koupal said. "I have full confidence in my abilities, and my teammates that they're going to show up that night and hit those big shots when they are needed for us."
Koupal, a 6-foot-3 senior guard/forward for the Wagner girls basketball team, has spent her final high school season doing something few players ever manage — thriving despite being the focal point of every opposing scouting report. Ranked No. 10 nationally in the 2026 recruiting class by 247Sports, the reigning South Dakota Gatorade Player of the Year has seen just about every defensive wrinkle imaginable.
It hasn't slowed her down.
Through 13 games this season, Koupal is averaging 28.4 points, 15.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 2.6 steals and 4.7 blocks per contest. Wagner is 11-2, ranked No. 4 in Class A, and driven offensively by a player who has learned how to score through all the defensive schemes being thrown at her.
That ability was on full display in a Jan. 3 win over Avon. Koupal poured in 38 points and stuffed the stat sheet with 17 rebounds, nine assists, seven blocks and a steal in a 62-44 Red Raider victory. The performance pushed her career total to 2,088 points at the time, allowing her to pass her aunt, Mandy Koupal, as Wagner's all-time leading scorer. Mandy's record of 2,065 points had stood since 1999.
For Avon girls basketball head coach Brad Poppe, slowing Koupal down is less about stopping her and more about remaining persistent.
"When it comes to trying to defend Ashlyn Koupal, it is a very taunting task," Poppe said. "This year when we played Wagner, I felt we needed to pick her up shortly after she crossed half-court. She has great range and she can pull-up from almost anywhere. But with saying that, she is a very good passer and if we focused too much on her, she would find her teammates."
Poppe's team tried it all — pressure from the opening tip, double teams in the post, extra help off shooters and even full-court press to make Koupal work harder for every touch.
"We are not very tall, so when Ashlyn would receive the ball in the post, we would try to double her," Poppe said. "If she was in the low post and they were running their high-low action, we tried to pressure the ball more in the high post to make that high-low pass a little more difficult. We tried nearly everything that night, just to try to make her work harder."
Those schemes are common for Koupal. Some teams throw a box-and-one at her, with a defender glued to her everywhere she goes and help defenders sitting around the paint. Others use a diamond-and-two, sometimes sending three defenders at once when she catches the basketball near the rim.
That trust extends to adjusting on the fly, whether she's posting up, spacing the floor or facilitating from the top.
"If I am inside or out, just depending on how they're playing, we kind of just take that up to the coaches and trust them on what we should do offensively, which usually ends up working out," she said.
Her head coach and father, Michael Koupal, has watched those adjustments become second nature.
"It hasn't changed in the last three years. I mean, she is used to it and she plays through the contact. She needs to do a little bit better on the most basic principle, and maybe I need somebody else to tell her because she doesn't listen to dad," he said with a laugh. "But it's just using the give-and-go action more because as soon as she gets rid of it, everybody relaxes."
But Koupal's willingness to give the ball up is what makes defending her so difficult when she moves without the basketball, causing defenders to over help and free her teammates up.
"She's always been a great passer," Michael Koupal said. "She is a team player, a generational kid, does well for herself, but she wants what's best for her teammates. That's hard to come by."
As of Jan. 30, Koupal has recorded 2,308 points, 1,508 rebounds, 417 assists, 223 steals and 348 blocks in five seasons since playing as an eighth grader. She also reached the 2,000-point mark Dec. 20 at Lennox, and later set a Wagner single-game scoring record with 42 points in a New Year's Eve win over Winner.
Coach Koupal said there are nights when Wagner needs her to score 35 points just to win. There are others where she settles into the mid-20s and lets her teammates get involved on the scoreboard.
"That's what is great to see," he said. "I love to see our other players step up and get the job done when the opposing defenses key on Ashlyn heavily. When the others are stepping up offensively, we are a tough team to beat."
As of Jan. 30, Koupal sits 15th on South Dakota's all-time girls scoring list with 2,308 points. The state record — 3,317 points by Mitchell Christian's Jill Young — remains far ahead, but the milestones keep piling up. Koupal signed her national letter of intent to play at Nebraska in November and was named to the Naismith Trophy preseason girls high school player of the year watchlist before the season began. On Thursday, Koupal was named to the McDonald's All-America Game nominee list for the West team, joined by Mahpiya Luta's Ashlan Carlow-Blount.
Until then, opposing teams will keep sending extra defenders. They'll keep building defenses designed to slow her down. And yet for all the accolades and milestones she continues to break, Koupal's mindset won't change to fulfill her goals in the sport of basketball.
"Just trusting the time I put in and knowing that it's all going to pay off," she said. "My game will come, so I try not to force anything and stay within myself. I just have to keep working. I can't get satisfied now because it's only going to get harder from here."
Continue reading...
Players face guard her when she doesn't have the ball, and trail her through every move she makes. Another defender waits in the lane. Sometimes there's a third, hovering just close enough to remind her that nothing will come easy.
For most players, it's suffocating. For Koupal, it's just another night on the basketball floor.
"I just trust my coaches that we're going to have offensive sets that we can run to try and get everybody involved when they are focusing on me a bit more," Koupal said. "I have full confidence in my abilities, and my teammates that they're going to show up that night and hit those big shots when they are needed for us."
Koupal, a 6-foot-3 senior guard/forward for the Wagner girls basketball team, has spent her final high school season doing something few players ever manage — thriving despite being the focal point of every opposing scouting report. Ranked No. 10 nationally in the 2026 recruiting class by 247Sports, the reigning South Dakota Gatorade Player of the Year has seen just about every defensive wrinkle imaginable.
It hasn't slowed her down.
Through 13 games this season, Koupal is averaging 28.4 points, 15.2 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 2.6 steals and 4.7 blocks per contest. Wagner is 11-2, ranked No. 4 in Class A, and driven offensively by a player who has learned how to score through all the defensive schemes being thrown at her.
That ability was on full display in a Jan. 3 win over Avon. Koupal poured in 38 points and stuffed the stat sheet with 17 rebounds, nine assists, seven blocks and a steal in a 62-44 Red Raider victory. The performance pushed her career total to 2,088 points at the time, allowing her to pass her aunt, Mandy Koupal, as Wagner's all-time leading scorer. Mandy's record of 2,065 points had stood since 1999.
For Avon girls basketball head coach Brad Poppe, slowing Koupal down is less about stopping her and more about remaining persistent.
"When it comes to trying to defend Ashlyn Koupal, it is a very taunting task," Poppe said. "This year when we played Wagner, I felt we needed to pick her up shortly after she crossed half-court. She has great range and she can pull-up from almost anywhere. But with saying that, she is a very good passer and if we focused too much on her, she would find her teammates."
Poppe's team tried it all — pressure from the opening tip, double teams in the post, extra help off shooters and even full-court press to make Koupal work harder for every touch.
"We are not very tall, so when Ashlyn would receive the ball in the post, we would try to double her," Poppe said. "If she was in the low post and they were running their high-low action, we tried to pressure the ball more in the high post to make that high-low pass a little more difficult. We tried nearly everything that night, just to try to make her work harder."
Those schemes are common for Koupal. Some teams throw a box-and-one at her, with a defender glued to her everywhere she goes and help defenders sitting around the paint. Others use a diamond-and-two, sometimes sending three defenders at once when she catches the basketball near the rim.
That trust extends to adjusting on the fly, whether she's posting up, spacing the floor or facilitating from the top.
"If I am inside or out, just depending on how they're playing, we kind of just take that up to the coaches and trust them on what we should do offensively, which usually ends up working out," she said.
Her head coach and father, Michael Koupal, has watched those adjustments become second nature.
"It hasn't changed in the last three years. I mean, she is used to it and she plays through the contact. She needs to do a little bit better on the most basic principle, and maybe I need somebody else to tell her because she doesn't listen to dad," he said with a laugh. "But it's just using the give-and-go action more because as soon as she gets rid of it, everybody relaxes."
But Koupal's willingness to give the ball up is what makes defending her so difficult when she moves without the basketball, causing defenders to over help and free her teammates up.
"She's always been a great passer," Michael Koupal said. "She is a team player, a generational kid, does well for herself, but she wants what's best for her teammates. That's hard to come by."
As of Jan. 30, Koupal has recorded 2,308 points, 1,508 rebounds, 417 assists, 223 steals and 348 blocks in five seasons since playing as an eighth grader. She also reached the 2,000-point mark Dec. 20 at Lennox, and later set a Wagner single-game scoring record with 42 points in a New Year's Eve win over Winner.
Coach Koupal said there are nights when Wagner needs her to score 35 points just to win. There are others where she settles into the mid-20s and lets her teammates get involved on the scoreboard.
"That's what is great to see," he said. "I love to see our other players step up and get the job done when the opposing defenses key on Ashlyn heavily. When the others are stepping up offensively, we are a tough team to beat."
As of Jan. 30, Koupal sits 15th on South Dakota's all-time girls scoring list with 2,308 points. The state record — 3,317 points by Mitchell Christian's Jill Young — remains far ahead, but the milestones keep piling up. Koupal signed her national letter of intent to play at Nebraska in November and was named to the Naismith Trophy preseason girls high school player of the year watchlist before the season began. On Thursday, Koupal was named to the McDonald's All-America Game nominee list for the West team, joined by Mahpiya Luta's Ashlan Carlow-Blount.
Until then, opposing teams will keep sending extra defenders. They'll keep building defenses designed to slow her down. And yet for all the accolades and milestones she continues to break, Koupal's mindset won't change to fulfill her goals in the sport of basketball.
"Just trusting the time I put in and knowing that it's all going to pay off," she said. "My game will come, so I try not to force anything and stay within myself. I just have to keep working. I can't get satisfied now because it's only going to get harder from here."
Continue reading...
