Though the heat has been sweltering outside, it was time last week at North Adams High School to move some basketball action indoors as the Lady Devils played host to seven other girls’ squads in the 2015 North Adams Girls Varsity Shootout. Teams from Eastern Brown, Huntington, Washington Courthouse, Piketon, Felicity, Greenfield McClain, and Southeastern all joined the Lady Devils for an event that featured 12 games on the day.
The format for the shootout was to play a pair of 18-minute halves, giving each team two timeouts per half, and stopping the clock only in the final minute of the first half and the final two minutes of the second half. Common fouls gave the ball out of bounds while shooting fouls equaled one point plus one shot, pretty standard fare for summer shootouts.
In the day’s earliest action, Piketon edged Eastern Brown 19-18 in a low-scoring defensive battle, while Huntington topped Felicity 55-35. The next round saw Eastern Brown rebound to defeat Huntington 48-38, while Felicity was getting past Piketon 34-15.
The third round of contests saw Greenfield get by Washington Courthouse 32-22 and in their first action of the day, the host Lady Devils knocked off Southeastern 50-21. Huntington topped Piketon 35-30 and Eastern Brown defeated Felicity 56-38.
Round five saw North Adams make it two straight with a 51-25 win over Washington Courthouse, while Greenfield got past Southeastern 42-35. The shootout concluded with Southeastern topping Washington Courthouse 45-40 and North Adams making it a sweep with a 48-18 romp past Greenfield.
Summer shootouts are a good time for coaches to experiment with different lineup combinations and substitute freely, and after his squad had swept three straight, North Adams head coach Rob Davis was pleased with his team’s results.
“I first want to thank everyone that came to our shootout, Said Davis. “It was a great turnout and I want to thank all the girls and parents and boosters plus all of my assistant coaches who pitched in at some point to help.”
“We had a busy three days with a junior high shootout on Monday, a JV shootout on Tuesday, and then this Wednesday varsity action. We have been playing pretty well this summer and sometimes I have to keep reminding them about effort, but after that we went pretty good. We have one more team camp left and that is at Ohio State. We always have a good time up there and we face some pretty tough competition.”
The Lady Devils varsity squad came back three days later to compete in another shootout, this one at Southeastern High School. On that day, North Adams lost their first outing to conference rival Eastern Brown 23-15, but swept through the rest of the day, defeating Huntington 33-17, Washington Courthouse 53-22, and host Southeastern 34-30.
North Adams will be competing in the OSU Camp on June 26 and 27.
