Lions rebuild their pride
[attach]2328[/attach]The junior girls basketball program at George S. Henry Academy is going through some growing pains.
This season the phys ed department decided to develop the junior program in the hopes it would create a strong basketball foundation.
It comes after a drop in Grade 9s and 10s trying out for the varsity program over the past three years, head coach Scott Davidson said.
“We have such a small population here at George S. Henry,” he said. “Last year we didn’t have one grade 9 girl who wanted to join the basketball team, so we sat down as a phys ed department and talked about it and decided we would have a junior team.”
After suffering two Lions losses early this season, a couple of players decided to leave the team.
“I just want to see the girls gain some confidence,” said Davidson. “It is unfortunate because we got beat Sept. 30 and we got beat Sept. 28.
“It is tough because like any developing program you will go through some growing pains and you aren’t very successful, so we need to gain a little confidence, so they want to keep going.”
On top of the Lions’ flagging morale was a scheduling error, where the young squad had three games last week on just two practices.
“I have coached both basketball and baseball and I have never had three games in one week before, so it was unfortunate because we could only practice Monday and Wednesday night,” Davidson said. “We only had one practice that was just drills, then once we found out our schedule we had to shift right in to five-on-five to prepare for the games this week.”
The hope was Davidson would have at least a week to implement a game plan and build the girls’ confidence before starting the season.
“I would rather have a week of practice where one girl can work on rebounding and another can work on dribbling, but it turned into a situation where we had to rush a system through a practice in order to get ready for these games,” he said. “A lot of the girls are new to the sport and I wanted to get them some practical experience, so they could understand some of the nuances of the game like where you need to stand when you throw the ball in.”
Davidson hopes the Tier 2 girls can continue learning the game and hopefully return to the roster for future seasons.
“I would be happy if they wanted to join next year,” he said. “It is important for them to continue learning the game and make some friends and through that want to come out and play next year, so that they can teach the younger kids who want to play next year.”