by Rusty Ellis
Smith County Lady Owls
There were many learning curves in Carthage for the Lady Owls in year one under new head coach Matt Ferrell.
A regular season that saw them go 1-5 in district play put them behind the eight-ball at the start of the postseason, but three wins in a row from the district consolation game to the region semifinals put them in a road substate game, where they gave Community all they could handle before falling 62-55 in overtime to end the season.
While the overall record might not have been what he wanted, Ferrell saw plenty to build on for the 2023-24 season.
“We spent the vast majority of the year trying to get healthy,” Ferrell said. “Merissa (Spivey) broke her arm in, I think, the second game of the season, and Chloe Collins dealt with a high ankle sprain for three weeks, and we had a couple concussions at a few different times, so we didn’t really get healthy until the week before the district tournament…I think the way we dealt with that as a group, we were able to make that run.”
That substate experience is something Ferrell is banking on as far as his team making the leap this coming season, as only two of his players had even been to substate games as spectators, let alone playing in one.
“You can’t put a value on that experience,” Ferrell said. “The four kids we’ve got coming back who played in that game, they’ll be more prepared for what that type of environment is like, and what it takes to make a deep run hopefully into March.”
Ferrell brings back a group that’s fully healthy to this point, featuring seniors Merissa Spivey, Airyn Enoch and Julia Dickerson, along with Collins for her junior year. Those four will be the pillars of the Lady Owls, as Ferrell knows he’ll need the four of them to play their best all year long.
“That group started every game they were available,” Ferrell said. “Those four coming back are as prepared as you can be, based on what they had to do last year…they grew up together, and they have done a really good job with this freshmen group coming up as far as preparing them for what to expect at the high school level. They’ve been a huge asset to these younger players, it’s going to prepare them more for game situations.”
Specifically, Spivey and Enoch are two that Ferrell believes are going to surprise some people this season.
“Merissa wasn’t able to show people her game as much as we would’ve liked last year just because she was hurt,” Ferrell said. “We believe she can be a game-changer for us…Airyn had three of the best games of her career last year in the games against Monterey, Westmoreland and Community. Those two kids are going to have big years for us.”
That leads to the question about expectations, and Ferrell says that bar’s been set pretty high.
“The difference to this year versus last year, they know better what the expectation is,” Ferrell said. “This year, I don’t think it’s going to take that same amount of time to get things figured out, but our schedule is pretty tough to start the year…I really feel like with the kids we’ve got coming back, they believe it would be a disappointment if we don’t make it back to substate. I think we can make it further.”
Smith County Owls
Smith County head coach Trey Sanders is no stranger to the excitement of getting basketball back up and rolling in Carthage every year, and the 2023-24 season is no exception.
2022-23 saw this team go 5-1 in district play before falling in the 6-2A semifinals to Watertown, a team that got red-hot and made a run to the substate round. The Owls went on to fall to Jackson County in double-overtime in the region quarterfinals, ending the season earlier than Sanders and his staff would’ve hoped.
None of that has dampened his optimism for the new season however.
“It’s one of those things that we’ve done enough conditioning and weight-lifting in the fall that they’re ready to get back on the floor,” Sanders said. “They’re ready to get back out here and start learning sets and preparing for another season, they’re hungry.”
Due to a big senior class graduating and a deep postseason run by the football team, it might be a few weeks before fans see what Smith County could truly look like, but Sanders isn’t looking at that as a negative.
Rather, he looks at it as an opportunity for his younger guys to get some minutes that they wouldn’t normally get.
“We’ve set a good scrimmage schedule in the preseason game and it allows them to get their feet wet earlier in the season,” Sanders said. “It gives them a chance to show us what they can do, and when we do get our football guys back, we know who we can rely on to step up in certain situations if needed. That’s a tremendous thing for this program.”
That doesn’t mean Sanders won’t be critical of this team’s play early in the year, he’ll be looking deeper than ever before for constant growth as the team gets to full-strength.
“For us, it’s progression one day to the next,” Sanders said. “As we move one day to the next, it’s how much these guys retain from what we’ve gone over that’s going to make the difference for us.”
And while it may be a few weeks, that doesn’t change what Sanders hopes to accomplish this season. When it comes to the main goal, he wants the team to hit their stride in district play and keep up that same level of play once tournament time begins.
“We’ve done that the last few years where we play really well in the regular season and then we come out flat in the district tournament,” Sanders said. “Early in the year, I’m looking for us to continue learning and keep from making mistakes multiple times, so that we can correct that and hit our stride at the right time.”