North Adams’ Tenzlee Burns (10) scored 12 points in the 7th grade Lady Devils SHAC tournament championship win over Fayetteville on February 1. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
8th Grade Girls, 7th Grade Boys tourney winners
Kennedi Campbell led the North Adams 7th grade girls with 16 points as they completed an undefeated season with a 44-28 win over Fayetteville in the SHAC Tournament finals. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
Peebles’ K.J. McClary looks around a pair of North Adams defenders for an open teammate in action from last weekend’s SHAC 7th grade boys tournament final. McClary scored 18 points but the Indians fell to North Adams 36-35. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
Peebles’ Chase Fossyl looks for a way around North Adams’ Kruze Winkler during the SHAC 7th grade boys tournament championship game on February 1. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
Peebles’ Caleb Johnson battles for possession in action from the first half of the February 1 SHAC 8th Grade Boys Tournament championship game. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
Peebles’ Keegan Puckett led the 8th grade Indians with 16 points in their 38-34 loss to Fayetteville in the finals of the SHAC Tournament. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)
By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
The first of the 2024-25 basketball seasons came to a close last Saturday as Peebles High School hosted the four championship games of the Southern Hills Athletic Conference Junior High Tournaments. A quartet of teams from Adams County were playing for titles – the North Adams 6th grade girls, 7th grade boys and 8th grade boys, along with the Peebles 7th grade boys, with two of those teams bringing home championship hardware.
In a season where a number of schools did not field 7th grade girls teams, the final two standing on Saturday for the tourney final were the Lynchburg Clay Lady Mustangs and the Whiteoak Lady Wildcats. This contest turned out to be an overtime thriller with Lynchburg prevailing 43-40.
Up next was the 8th grade girls final with the heavy favorite being Coach Brady Johnson and his North Adams Lady Devils.
Why the heavy favorite? Well, the Lady Devils came into Saturday’s game riding an amazing 34-game undefeated streak in junior high spanning their 7th and 8th grade careers. Across the floor attempting to end that streak were the Fayetteville Lady Rockets, who had a very impressive season themselves, finishing 11-1 in conference play and winning the small school division, their only loss coming to North Adams.
The big school division winning Lady Devils may not have been at their sharpest on Saturday, but for two seasons, even not at their best has been good enough to never suffer a loss. With all of the points coming from guard Kennedi Campbell, North Adams jumped to a quick 8-0 lead only to see the Lady Rockets toss in a pair of treys to cut the lead to 8-6 after one quarter. Coach Johnson’s squad stepped up the defense in the second quarter, holding Fayetteville to just a single free throw while his team got two baskets each from Tenzlee Burns and Marnie Toole to take a 23-7 halftime advantage.
Fayetteville closed the gap to 33-21 after the third quarter but just did not have enough firepower to keep up with the Lady Devils’ slew of offensive weapons. North Adams pulled away in the final period on their way to a 44-28 victory that sewed up the tourney title and capped a perfect 19-0 season.
The Lady Devils were led by three players in double figures – Campbell with 16, Burns with 12 and Tolle with 11. Fayetteville was paced by 12 points from Kenna Stratton.
Up next was the 7th grade boys championship tilt, with North Adams, who finished their conference season with a perfect 13-0 mark and only suffered one defeat all year, matched up with county rival Peebles, the tourney’s #2 seed.
This 7th grade final, a battle which will be renewed often over the next five seasons, was a back and forth thriller from beginning to end. Behind 8 points from K.J. McClary, the Indians led 11-8 after one quarter and with the North Adams offense struggling to just a single point in the second, Peebles held a 15-9 halftime lead.
The halftime respite must have breathed some new life into the North Adams offense, as they rallied to score 15 in the third stanza, 9 of those by Dawson Souder. The third period ended in a deadlock at 24, setting up an exciting final six minutes. The Devils got some strong play in the final few minutes from Trayvon Merritt-Evans while McClary continued to pace the Indians but the game came down to the final seconds. After McClary hit a pair of free throws to tie the game at 35, North Adams’ Jace Michael was fouled and hit the second of two free tosses and that was enough to give his team a 36-35 win and a 7th grade tournament championship.
Coach Mark Willett’s champions were led by 14 points from Souder, with Merritt-Evans also hitting double figures with 11. For Peebles, McClary led all scorers with 18 with Kaesyn Hopkins getting 8 and Slade Abbott 7,
The final battle of the day was the 8th grade boys title game, matching the #3 seeded Fayetteville Rockets and the #4 seeded Peebles Indians. The Indians, under head coach Weston Browning, had upset top-seeded Whiteoak in double overtime in the semi-finals and were looking to cap their run with a tourney championship trophy.
A low-scoring first period saw the Rockets leading 7-6 and by the half, the Rockets still held a slim lead at 14-12. In the third quarter, Peebles got 5 points from Caleb Phipps and six from big man Keegan Puckett to flip the scoreboard to a one-point lead at 36-25 as the final quarter began. Puckett again hit three buckets in the final six minutes in a game that came right down to the wire. In the final moments, some crucial Peebles turnovers led to easy scores for the Rockets as Fayetteville held on to take the tourney title with a 38-34 win.
The Rockets were led in scoring by two players with 13 apiece, Levi Espinoza and Sam Coffman. Peebles was led by Puckett with 16 and Caleb Johnson with 9.
