Ever since their season-ending loss to Towns County in February during the first round of the Region 8A-Public tournament, the Greene County Lady Tigers’ basketball team has been wanting to get back out on the court.
They started summer workouts two weeks ago and recently scrimmaged several other teams at Morgan County High School during a ‘play-date’ fundraiser.
GCHS head coach Derrick Williams is liking what he’s seeing from his girls so far.
“A lot of what we’ve been doing is fine-tuning (our game) and trying to find consistency,” Williams said. “It’s funny, during our first practice (of the summer), the girls still had a bad taste in their mouth about the Towns County loss. I told them that we need to learn from our mistakes and move on.”
A huge positive for Williams entering year two is that a majority of his roster returns next season. The Lady Tigers’ only senior last year was forward Dnya Terrell.
He said the only negative is having Chris’Tia Hilsman miss the first half of the season.
“She tore her ACL and meniscus, but besides that, we have everyone coming back for next season,” Williams said. “I am extremely excited about that.”
Both the Lady Tigers’ varsity and JV squads competed on Tuesday at MCHS. They played against Piedmont Academy, Morgan County and Mary Persons.
Greene County’s summer schedule is packed tight for the rest of the month. The Lady Tigers competed at Apalachee High School on Wednesday. Also, they will play a few scrimmages at Strom Thurmond High School in South Carolina on Saturday. Additionally, GCHS has a couple of more play-dates at JMA and Jones County before hosting its own event on Tuesday, June 28 in the Tigers Den.
“We will host nine teams during our playdate,” Williams said. “We have several different high schools coming over to compete in the basketball fundraiser.”
He hopes that with all these scrimmages, his squad will get better and improve.
“The biggest thing this summer is, like I previously mentioned, finding more consistency,” Williams said. “We’ve also got to find someone to take over the point guard role. Last season, we played point guard by the committee. Now, we need to someone to step up and solidify that role while also being a leader on the team.”
However, he acknowledged that he’s already seen a few girls display those types of characteristics.
“The day after our season ended, Erin Dixon came to me and wanted to get back in the gym,” Williams said. “She was in the gym four days a week. We took a couple of days off, but she’s been consistently in the gym almost every day. Sariah (Armour) and Kayla (Sigman) have also stepped up as well.”