North Adams hosts SHAC Girls Preview

By Mark Carpenter

People’s Defender

The hardwood is active again and high school basketball fans are anticipating another winter of excitement and thrills from their local teams. The 10 varsity girls teams from the Southern Hills Athletic Conference put their talents on display n November 17 at North Adams High School as the Seaman school played host to the annual SHAC Girls Preview. As it has always been the competing teams played two quarters of basketball and the match up were determined two weeks earlier with the SHAC coaches poll.

First up on the evening was an all-Adams County affair between two teams welcoming first-year coaches to the helm, the West Union Dragons and coach Jacob Stout and the Manchester Lady Greyhounds and coach Jordan Johnson. Both squads are looking to make improvement from recent seasons and the preview game was an opportunity to work out some of the early kinks.

The story of the WU-MHS contest was Lady Dragons’ freshman guard Annabelle McIntosh, who torched the nets for 17 points in just the two quarters of action. A swarming West Union press and the offensive exploits of McIntosh resulted in an 11-0 first quarter lea for the Lady Dragons. A basket by Abby Neria at the 3:20 mark gave Manchester their first points and the opening frame ended with West Union up 16-5.

The Lady Dragons maintained that lead throughout the second period and ended up winning the half, 28-13. McIntosh’s 17 led all scorers while the Lady Hounds were paced by 9 points from Abby Neria.

“Our game plan didn’t go quite as we planned tonight but we had a lot of fight,Coach Johnson told C103 radio after his team’s half of play. “I thought our girls started a little shell-shocked and we have a lot of learning to do but our girls have a lot of heart and they’re working hard every day. We knew West Union would be fast and could shoot the ball and they made the shots tonight. We’re building for the future and I think we will just continue to get better and better. We want this to be a new era of Lady Hounds basketball.”

“We played an up-tempo game tonight and that’s what we want to do all year long,” Coach Stout explained in his postgame radio interview. “We don’t have a lot of size so we have to make up for that with our quickness. I feel like anyone on our bench can come in and fill any role. Our key will be to keep a good attitude all season and just continue to work and get better.”

The third match up of the preview saw third-year head coach Sidney Pell and her Peebles Lady Indians battle the Fayetteville Lady Rockets for two quarters. Coach Pell field an experience squad of four seniors and five juniors as they expect to battle for the top spot in the big school division of the SHAC.

In the preview contest, the Lady Indians rod the wings of two of those seniors, Payton Johnson and Caydence Carroll, who combined for all 16 first quarter points as Peebles led 16-9 after one. In the second frame, the Lady Indians got a three-pointer from Lydia Maddox plus two-point goals from Johnson and Rylee Barr and held on for a 23-16 preview victory.

Johnson ended up leading the winners with 11 points while Fayetteville as topped by 6 points from Christina Murphy.

“We brought all but one player from last year do our girls pretty much know what I expect and what we run,” said Coach Pell in her postgame radio spot. “We still have a long way to go and a lot to figure out but this is a good group. We have to finish games a little better, we lost a lot of close games last year so this year we just have to compete and learn to win. We also can’t ask Payton (Johnson) to do everything, she has to have some help to make us more balanced all the way around. I’m excited to see how this year goes.”

The final half of the evening saw the two teams that the coaches picked to win the SHAC, the North Adams Lady Devils and the Whiteoak Lady Wildcats. In what turned out to be a highly competitive half that forebodes a regular season meeting, the two teams were tied at 8 after one quarter with the Lady Devils, who only gad six players available, getting points from five of them.

Things got a bit feisty as the second period progressed but four buckets in the paint from junior Katelynn Boerger propelled the host team into the lead and they were able to run out the clock and take the half 21-18.

Boerger led the winners with 10 points as every lady Devil who dressed got into the scoring column, a trademark of Coach Rob Davis’s teams. Whiteoak was led by 5 points from senior Jaylie Parr.

“Things got a little physical out there but I told the girls to just play hard and have fun, but some of the competitiveness came out,” Coach Davis said in the postgame. “We were out there diving for loose balls and that’s what I want to see and for just six girls, I thought they all played well. Even if it’s just a preview, I want to see the girls go out there and get after it and get off to a good start. We didn’t show a lot of stuff but what we did, I though we executed but there are a few little things we have to clean up. There’s a lot of good teams in our league and you better be ready to play every night.”

With the preview out of the way, the local girls squad now look to the regular season which will begin this Saturday at the Manchester Tip-Off Classic. At 3:45 p.m. the West Union Lady Dragons will face Portsmouth Clay and at 6:45 p.m. the host Lady Hounds will battle Sciotoville East.

On Monday. November 27, Peebles will jump right into conference play when they host a very solid Lynchburg squad. The final county team to open up will be North Adams when they travel to Fayetteville on November 30 to open their SHAC title defense.