by Ella Kate McCord
The Lovett girls basketball team has grown this year through many team bonding experiences. Even though Kamryn Washington acknowledged that the season has been “kind of rough,” she thinks that it has been made better because “our team is really fun and the group of girls gets along very well.”
Kamryn has been playing basketball at Lovett since the eighth grade and this year has really been different for her because it is her senior year! “I think the season is different because unlike other seasons there isn’t like a hierarchy and we all get together really well and respect each other as players but also as humans.”
As we all know there has been a recent division change and in some sports it has really made an impact. Coach L, the Girls varsity coach who has been coaching for over 10 years, told me, “It has been interesting being in a new classification, so it has definitely been a bit more challenging, with better teams. I feel like we have competed against them pretty well at times and struggled with some of the really good teams.”
Even with the tougher competition, they have managed to notch a couple of wins. “Region tournament will be next week which will be exciting,” Coach L says. “I expect us to be in the middle of the pack. We have gotten ourselves into a pretty good spot with the regular season games and then next week is just anyone’s game really.”
The team took a recent Hilton Head trip for a three-day tournament during winter break and it sounds like it was the moment that brought the team closer than ever including Coach L. They would have one game a day and the rest of the day was spent doing team bonding activities on the beach or somewhere fun!
Kamryn said that she was at first annoyed she was annoyed about having to do a school thing over break, “but it was so fun because we got to really team bond. ” Then, Coach L told me almost the exact same thing, celebrating both the tournament and the social cohesion.
In the end, this team has grown so much over the season to be where they are right now and there are very high hopes of them doing very well in their regional games next week. Through their team bonding, we will definitely be seeing the chemistry between the players on the court and how well they communicate and work together.
In terms of the future of girls varsity basketball, Coach L says, “I hope that we just continue on improving and now that we know what we are up against, it’s going to be a bit easier to prepare as a player and as a coach.”
