West Union’s Kiersten Rowe, left, looks for a path to the basket around a Westfall defender in action from the June 16 Girls Varsity Shootout at West Union High School.

West Union’s Mikayla Akers, right, was whistled for a foul on this play, attempting to stop a Westfall player from getting to the rim during play from the June 26 shootout at WUHS.

Shootouts abounded around the county in the month of June and one of those took place on June 26 at West Union High School as Coach Jason Claytor and the lady Dragons hosted the “Lady Dragons Varsity Shootout.”

Six other girls varsity squads from southern Ohio were also on hand, including Georgetown, Eastern Brown, Huntington Ross, Lynchburg Clay, Westfall, and Portsmouth Notre Dame. The whispers of the day centered around the play of the Lynchburg Lady Mustangs, who will likely be the favorite this upcoming season in the Southern Hills Athletic Conference. The Lady Mustangs won all three of their contests on the day, defeating Georgetown, Westfall, and Notre Dame.

The host lady Dragons had a tough day, dropping decisions to Georgetown, Huntington Ross, and Westfall in a close one. Other local results of the day saw the SHAC’s Eastern Brown Lady Warriors go perfect with wins over Huntington Ross, Notre Dame, and Westfall.

Coach Claytor’s overall view of his team’s summer play was a mixed bag of good and bad.

“If I had to define our summer, I would call it sporadic excellence,” said Claytor. “We were up and down to say the least. For the most part, I expected us to be spotty this summer. After losing six seniors, we had to find some new chemistry. At times it was good and at times it wasn’t.”

“We didn’t play as many games this summer as some other programs because we spent the beginning of June practicing and trying to all get on the same page.”

“We went to Wilmington, where over the two days we went 4-2-1,” continued the West Union head coach. “We had a couple of very good performances up there. After that, we had a shootout at home and things didn’t go as planned and we struggled.”

“We finished up with a shootout at Western Latham where we went 2-1 and the game we lost we only had five kids after some had to leave, so that day was a success. So, in the few events we actually played in, we played well in two and struggled in one. In the words of Meatloaf, ‘two out of three ain’t bad.’ I really like the progress we made. When we looked good, we looked really good. I think that once we can get some actual practice time we will gain that consistency.”

At the WUHS Shootout, games consisted of two 16-minute halves with the standard running clock that only stopped in the last two minutes of the half.