For Jackson County’s girls’ basketball team, it’s a numbers game.
In fact, new coach John Hawley keeps an itemized sheet of specific statistical targets the Lady Panthers wish to meet each night in his first year on the job. The studious number crunching isn’t limited to just games, however. Hawley and his staff chart everything in practice, including each shot taken in a competitive situation.
It’s that kind of attention to detail that Hawley — whose Lady Panthers tip the season off Saturday at Union County — brings to the job. But all the numbers and the charting is just a way for Hawley, who inherits a 13-12 team from last year, to quantify what he really loves to do – develop players.
“The games are great,” said Hawley, who came out of retirement to coach the Lady Panthers. “I know that’s what everybody plays for, and it’s what the kids play for. But I like being in the gym and working with kids and directing them. Because so much of sports has so much correlation with what they’re doing in the rest of their life.”
While Jackson County has since moved on to scheme-oriented workouts, Hawley started his tenure at Jackson County by bringing a new philosophy to the campus: skills first.
In fact, the Lady Panthers spent the entire offseason honing individual abilities in all areas. Regardless of a player’s position, Hawley wants all his players to have a diverse skill set and not feel relegated to specific things.
“It’s like I tell the kids all the time: We want to get out side the box and then we want to blow up the box,” Hawley said. “Because all kids have got to be able to dribble and pass and catch the basketball for us to be successful.”
Hawley, who enters his 26th season overall as a head coach, begins his tenure at JCCHS with a nucleus of four seniors returning from that 13-12 team: Ashley Skelton (guard), Emily Elrod (guard), Sierra Roncadori (center) and Breanna Drew (forward). Jackson County also returns others who played a decent amount a year ago: junior Danni Cunningham (forward), sophomore Victoria Fontana (guard), sophomore Savannah Roncadori (guard) and junior Macey Latty (guard). Among the newcomers getting a look are freshmen Katie Phillips and Mason Garland.
While he’s still sorting out different lineups, Hawley hopes to use 8-10 Lady Panthers per game “the way we’re going to play.” And part of his philosophy is to play up-tempo.
“We definitely want to get up and down the court,” Hawley said. “I’m a strong believer of getting up and down the court. I’m a strong believer in taking advantage of easy baskets.”
Hawley also plans to extend the Lady Panther defense and extend its pressure.
“We don’t want to give people free passes and also give them an opportunity to set up easily on offense,” he said. “We want to be the aggressor defensively.”
Hawley will see how this all plays out in year one, but beyond this basketball season, he wants to grow the sport in Jackson County more than anything else.
So in the great numbers game, the number that means most to Hawley is participation.
“We want to get more kids involved and back in the sport of basketball …,” Hawley said. “My goal is to have three teams. I want a freshman team, a JV team and a varsity team. That’s my biggest goal is to get three teams here. We really want to work hard at trying to get that because that’s where you really develop a program.”
