Competitive Spirit Sparks Girls Basketball Team

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By David Wagner

When the varsity girls basketball season started no one really knew what to expect from Western Albemarle. Head Coach Kris Wright’s team was young and inexperienced. Led by a senior backcourt consisting of guards Natalie Marbury and Julia Haws, the Warriors knew that intensity and effort would be there. A strong junior class of Ava Coles, Anna Fantozzi, Deja-Newton Grant and Eleri Hayden reinforced the senior leadership to give the Warriors a good nucleus of experienced players. The unknown was the level of play the underclassmen would bring. Half of the roster are underclassmen (five sophomores and one freshman).

The strong sophomore class of Mary Burch, Ann Meenan, Shannon Moore, Anna O’Shea and Mady Starsia made an immediate impact, along with freshman Elisabeth Coffman. The Warriors were competitive from the start, beating Liberty-Bedford and Covenant and winning two of their first five Jefferson District contests. The Warriors have won at least one game against every Jefferson District opponent except Albemarle and Charlottesville and have only two lop-sided defeats all season (CHS 61-38 and Orange County 61-36). CHS has beaten the Warriors three times this season, but the other two losses were a 59-50 defeat at Charlottesville and a 44-37 disappointment in a mid-season tournament.

The Warriors avenged that 25-point drubbing at Orange County High School with a 51-44 win at Western Albemarle in their second regular season match-up. As it stands, the Warriors are 9-10 overall and 4-2 in non-district games (those two losses to a highly competitive Jefferson Forest squad out of Lynchburg. Five of their ten losses have been by seven points or less, and the Warriors are giving up only about a point and a half more per contest than they are scoring (42.15/43.57). Take away the two big losses at CHS and OCHS and the Warriors are actually outscoring their opponents by just more than a point a game (42.7/41.5).

With their scrappy never-say-die style of play, this team could surprise a few people in the post-season. They will wrap up the regular season this week before starting the Jefferson District tournament next week and then moving on to Conference 29 play. The experience garnered by this year’s team bodes well for the future. The Warriors will have an upperclassmen-laden team next year and Wright and his staff will have a talented and competitive group of players.

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