MANY basketball coaches believe in compressing a full season’s worth of games into their summer schedules.
Not John Hawley.
“There were times when I played 40-50 games a year, but I don’t know that you really get much out of it,” the Jackson County girl’s coach said.
It’s not that Hawley wants his team to shy away from work. It’s just that he adheres to the philosophy that summer is for individual skill work — like lifting weights and shooting in the gym.
Playing a lot of games runs counterintuitive to that, Hawley believes.
Case in point: Jackson County wrapped up its scrimmage schedule Thursday, having played eight times this summer.
“I’m just not a big believer in just playing,” Hawley said. “If you do that, then you’re spending all your time on team stuff and we’re trying to really work on our individual development.”
Even when his team does play scrimmages, he doesn’t delve too heavily into the X’s and O’s. Hawley said summer exhibitions are a time for players to learn on the run.
“We didn’t even put an out-of-bounds play in,” Hawley said of one recent scrimmage. “We just said ‘figure it out and get it in.’”
The Lady Panthers did a good job of figuring it out last year.
Jackson County finished second in a competitive Region 8-AA South and fell one win shy of reaching the state tournament.
But the program moves up to 8-AAA this year and lost two key seniors off last year’s squad — point guard and team leader Macey Latty and Danni Cunningham, who was a force in the post.
Jackson County does, however, return a solid core with players like Victoria Fontana, Mason Garland, Katie Phillips and Savannah Roncadori.
Hawley said the key to next season — with what will be a smaller lineup — is pushing the pace of the game.
“We’re pretty much a guard-forward team,” Hawley said. “We definitely need to pick-up our pace more and pressure even more … We’re going to have to create some havoc.”
Overall, Hawley does note a low number of players in the program — 15. Ideally, he’d like to have enough players to field varsity, junior varsity and freshmen teams.
“I just wish we could have a few more kids that excited about basketball,” Hawley said. “It’s a tough game. No bones about it. You’ve got to run and you’ve got to play.”
That said, he’s plenty pleased with the players he does have in the program and the direction they’re going.
The work ethic, he said, is definitely there and the individual skill level has increased significantly over the past couple of seasons.
“The kids that we have, they give us every thing they have,” Hawley said. “They’re really working hard. I’m really pleased with the work ethic.”
