Beaufort Girls Young But Competitive

By WORTHY EVANS

  Contributing Writer

Beaufort--The young Beaufort girls basketball team has been a bit of a surprise this season. At 7-5 going into Friday night’s (Jan.,4) game against a red-hot Ashley Ridge team, the Eagles have already won as many games as they did last season, when they finished 7-15, and third in Region 8-3A.



“We’re a young team,” said head coach Reggie Jones, in his 10^th season with the Eagles. “We only have two seniors on the team, but this group of girls all played together at our charter schools, H2 (youth basketball), AAU. They’re a very talented young group, so what I did was put them into two Thanksgiving tournaments, which showed them all the top 5A schools: Sumter and Socastee, Summerville and Ashley Ridge. They needed the experience quick.”

Freshman point guard Jania Hayward, eighth-grader scoring guard Da’Leah LaBoard, junior guard Zaria Coaxum, junior forward Carson Crosby, and senior forward Davariyah Smith have been the recent starting lineup. Hayward is the leading scorer, averaging 11.5 points per game. LaBoard averages 3.9 points per game, but had five 3-pointers and 19 points in a recent game. Coaxum averages 9.1 points per game, Crosby averages 3.8 points and 5.8 rebounds per game, and Smith averages 4.5 points and 4.7 rebounds per game.

With all of the non-region experience that Coach Jones said was designed to get the girls—all individual talents and all on-court leaders—to play together against high-level talent.

“When we come back down to our level in the region, we’ll be starting three- point guards, and a lot of people will have to pick their poison,” Jones said. “They’re going to be very good with the ball on the court.”

The hardest part, Jones added, has been and will be getting the girls to communicate on the court and share the basketball.

“All three of them (the guards) are used to having ball in their hands,” Jones said. “The challenge will be just getting them to share that ball and how they start to trust each other, move the ball around—whoever’s hot, pass it to them.”

This season Beaufort is back up to the AAAA classification, placed in Region 6-AAAA that includes Bishop England, May River, Bluffton, Colleton County, and Hilton Head Island.

“That juggernaut is always Bishop England, along with May River, Bluffton, Hilton Head, and Colleton,” Jones said. “Bluffton lost four of their starts but they have one young lady there who will keep them competitive. Bishop England is always going to be in the fight for region. That program is next-girl-up. They always have girls ready to play.”

There lies the importance of those big games early in the season. The young Eagles lost 36-30 to Socastee and 50-31 to Sumter, and 67-20 to Summerville back in November, and on Dec. 2 fell to Ashley Ridge 87-39. While lopsided losses, Jones said he thinks the girls learned a lot about how a solid team brings intensity to the court.

One more game against Ashley Ridge Friday night will help.

“We’re looking pretty good, but we have a lot of work to do. Ashley Ridge ought to straighten us out a little bit,” said Jones. “ After that, we open the region at Bluffton Tuesday night, and later on we play Bishop England and Hilton Head, and all of those games will tell us where we’re at.”

The Boys team is in a rebuilding phase after losing 11 seniors from last year’s 10-12 effort. This year the Eagles are 1-9 going into Friday’s Ashley Ridge game, and have mostly sophomores and juniors on the roster.

Senior Samari Bonds leads the team with 18.4 points and 7.8 rebounds per game. Another senior, Amani Cleckley, averages 9.0 points and 2.0 rebounds per game.