BRADFORD, Vt. — It’s a feel-good season so far for the Oxbow High girls basketball team, which improved to 12-1 on Tuesday with a 58-34 victory over Harwood.

Start with 11th-year coach Barry Emerson, who’s in his 21st year as a physical education teacher at the school. Broad-shouldered and a one-time logger and high-steel worker who twice served combat deployments with the Vermont National Guard, he’s coached a plethora of soccer and basketball teams.

Plenty of them endured losing seasons. So it’s nice for Emerson’s many supporters to see the empathetic boss at the helm of a successful squad.

“I’m enjoying every second of coaching a great group of kids,” Emerson said after the VPA Division III Olympians used a 23-8 run to build a 20-point halftime lead against the D-II Highlanders (9-3). “They’re into it, and they care.”

Braylee Phelps led the hosts with 22 points and Makenna Houston had 12 points for Oxbow. Maggi Ellsworth added seven points, her range never quite dialed in on 3-of-13 shooting from the floor.

That Ellsworth is shooting at all, however, is a vast improvement. The senior guard tore an anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee 14 months ago during a soccer game and endured nine months of rehabilitation. Achieving medical clearance was one hurdle, but regaining her basketball sharpness and athleticism was another.

“There were some games at the beginning where you could tell I didn’t want to come down on the knee with a rebound,” said Ellsworth, who twists to land mostly on her right side when she falls. “It was a subconscious thing, but it’s gotten much better and my quickness and my side-to-side movement has improved.

“The pain’s gone down. There’s not as much swelling, and I don’t have to ice it as much.”

Ellsworth was crushed when Oxbow lost in the basketball playoff quarterfinals her sophomore year and used repeated viewings of that game as motivation to train during the following summer.

She was two weeks away from getting another shot at reaching the Barre Auditorium, site of Vermont’s semifinal and championship games, when her knee gave out during a non-contact soccer move. Twice-a-week physical therapy visits followed and Ellsworth now wants to major in that field in college, but the sessions were taxing.

“It was a painful process and then having to sit out and watch basketball happen definitely took a mental toll,” Ellsworth said, recalling how she sometimes remained in the locker room in tears after her teammates took the floor for warmups last winter. “For so long, all I could do was foul shots, so now they’re my strong suit.”

A soccer player since kindergarten, Ellsworth elected not to play that sport last fall, instead using the time to further strengthen her knee and train specifically for a basketball return. The psychological and emotional aspects of that journey have often been more difficult than the physical component.

“You put in the work, but you can’t control how your body reacts,” she said. “When it’s not where you want it to be, it’s a downward mental spiral. You wonder what if you don’t catch up, why did this happen to me?”

Ellsworth relied on outside shooting to begin the season but has slowly incorporated more offensive play inside the arc. The Olympians have enough strengths to let No. 10 advance at a comfortable pace, including well-coordinated team defense, physical post player Libby Swift and well-rounded forward Makenna Houston.

“They don’t talk a lot on defense, and I get on them for that, but without talking they still know where to be and what to do,” Emerson said.

Oxbow is second to Windsor (12-1) in the D-III standings but doesn’t play the Yellowjackets during the regular season. Hazen (11-0) is third based on the VPA’s index points system, with Bellows Falls (10-3) fourth.

Oxbow, which suffered its lone loss of the season to Division II Lamoille (10-3) last week, has a huge test looming on Feb. 18 when it visits D-II leader North Country (12-1). The O’s visit another D-II foe, U-32 (4-8), on Thursday.

Tris Wykes can be reached at ctwykes@aol.com.