SLIPPERY ROCK — Macy McCall is only 14 and won't be 15 until July. She was born in the year 2000. She is part of Generation Z. A 2Ker. She'll never know the pound sign as anything other than a Twitter hashtag.

And the freshman is a starting guard for the Slippery Rock High girls basketball team.

“I think I might be the youngest player starting in the state,” McCall said. “Maybe the country.”

She's not the only youngster in the Rockets' lineup. Around her are four sophomore starters: Steph Croll, Bailey Boyd, Jenna Whitmer and Elena McDermott.

None of them are old enough to drive.

They were toddlers, some barely old enough to walk, the last time John Tabisz coached the Slippery Rock girls basketball team.

Now Tabisz is the second year of his third stint as the Rockets coach and marvels at how well his younger-than-young team has performed this season with an 9-5 overall record and a perfect 4-0 mark in the region.

“It's new to me,” Tabisz said. “I've never put a varsity team out there this young.”

Slippery Rock was still one of the youngest teams in the state before junior Marissa Siebka was lost for the season with a torn ACL in her left knee suffered two weeks ago.

The team was also hit with an impact injury before the season when sophomore center Sedona Campbell went down with her own ACL injury.

“We've had to overcome a lot of adversity,” Croll said. “We work well together as a team. We've been playing together (since the fourth grade) and we know how to play together.”

That closeness is evident in practice. They giggle. They joke. They have fun and frolic.

They even do a few cartwheels from time to time.

“Look,” Tabisz said, pointing at McCall doing a few flips. “She just did a cartwheel. This is what I'm coaching. That's what I'm talking about. We looked like little kids out there against Oil City (a 52-34 win Monday night). But when it's time to get serious, they get serious and focus on the task.”

Slippery Rock has been successful in large part because players like Croll and Whitmer have stepped up, especially after the Siebka injury.

In the five games since Siebka went down, Croll is averaging nearly 13 points per game while Whitmer has put up 18 per contest — including 20-plus in her last three games.

They've also been successful for another reason.

“We don't give up,” McCall said.

It was a sentiment Boyd and Whitmer repeated.

“We hustle 100 percent,” Boyd said. “We don't go into games hoping we're going to win, we go in thinking we can win.”

“We just give it all we have,” Whitmer added. “All the time.”

Tabisz said that the youth has been to Slippery Rock's benefit. Quite simply, they don't know any better.

“It kind of works to their advantage,” Tabisz said. “They don't feel the pressure. They play relaxed in big games.”

Before the season, Tabisz and his assistant coach, Amber Osborn, put zero win-loss expectations on the team. The only objective was improvement from one day — and even from one drill — to the next.

“We have adopted a philosophy: tomorrow's practice should be better than today's,” Tabisz said. “Because of how young they are, we don't talk in terms of winning and losing. We talk in terms of trying to get better.”

With everyone coming back, next season, the young players said they are trying not to fall into that wait-until-next-year trap.

“We want to win for (them),” Boyd said. “We don't want (them) to think it was (their) fault and the season is over. We want to keep the season going. It doesn't end just because they're hurt.”