By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
With a very convincing win on January 26 in Fayetteville, Coach Sidney Pell and her Peebles Lady Indians are once again sitting along atop the standings in the small school division of the Southern Hills Athletic Conference, one win away from clinching outright.
The Lady Indians trounced Fayetteville 67-30 behind 24 points from junior guard Payton Johnson, 13 from Angel Gray and 12 from Abigail Smalley. The visiting Peebles squad made their statement early, leading 21-4 after the first quarter and never looked back.
The Lady Indians win improved them to 7-5 in conference play, one game ahead of 6-6 Whiteoak, and with one conference game left, they have clinched no worse than a tie and can win the SHAC small school outright on Thursday night. That won’t be an easy task as the Tribe will travel to Lynchburg to face the 11-8 Lady Mustangs, who were the preseason choice to win the big school division and have won four of their last five outings. Whiteoak will be heavily favored to win their final SHAC outing as they will host the Manchester Lady Greyhounds.
“We knew coming into the season that we had a tough schedule with a young team,” said Coach Pell. “Through some adversity and growing pains early, it seems like we have finally figured things out and are firing on all cylinders the last few games. Several girls with very little experience coming into the year have grown up throughout our season and are making a huge difference right now. We dropped a few games early that we thought might take us out of league contention, however, someone must have been looking out for us because the chips fell just right for us to control our own destiny with one conference game left. With our win at Fayetteville we locked up a share of the league with a chance to win it outright at Lynchburg against a very tough team that has also recently found their stride.”
After their regular season finale at Lynchburg, the Lady Indians will then move on to sectional tournament play, this time in Division III, when they will travel to Minford on February February at 1 p.m.