Holly Hill Academy Teams Facing Long Season But Keeping the Faith

Larry Gamble

Photo Editor

Holly Hill – Both the boy and girls’ basketball teams of the Holly Hill Academy Raiders are having a rough start to the 24-25 season. 

Lady Raiders Basketball

Head Coach Heath Prescott is optimistic the program is improving, “the more games we can play, the better we will get.”

Returning players for the Lady Raiders include seniors Kaylee Brabham (out for season) and Chloe Wren along with juniors Peyton Strickland, Kaylee Eken, and Kaley Bell, plus sophomores Essie Wolpert, Kloie Mizell, Taylor Wright, and Kaylee Cuttino. 

Leading scorers for the seven games currently played by the Lady Raiders are sophomore Essie Wolpert 9.6 PPG with 6.1 RPG, junior Peyton Strickland 4.3 PPG with 5.7 RPG. The next highest players with PPG of 4.0 or more are motivated JV girls. Caitlyn Crisp, the 8^th grader, has 4.0 PPG and 2.6 RPG behind Milly Kate Prescott, the 7^th grader, with 9.6 PPG and 4.2 RPG.

When about games and the close loses, he said “This team is right there” regarding being competitive and games decided on just a few turnovers or missed opportunities.” With an 8-person varsity roster, he must rotate JV players up for games. 

In his second year as the varsity HC, Coach Prescott also coaches the JV and B-Team girls. “We had good buy-in and turnout during our pre-season workouts, we are a couple years out” from building a basketball pipeline. If he can do it, other SCISA Class A schools in his conference should bench-mark it. “Our girls played 6 games before tonight’s and Lowcounty already played 16 games and it’s because schools in our conference have a boy’s program but not a girl’s program.” 

Boys Basketball

The Holly Hill boys’ varsity is a senior heavy team with 9 seniors and one sophomore. There 2-5 record could easily be 4-3 with a few breaks going their way. The season started with two wins, but they’ve struggled since then. Head Coach Justin Gillam is in his first-year coach the varsity and he is assisted by Cam Wilder.

Coach Wilder admits the team is heavy on seniors but Mason Connor (6-1, 150) 3.8 PPG with 7.2 RPG and Brodon Murray are multi-sport athletes, and this is their first year playing basketball. The team leaders are Jody “Boogy” Gillam (6-1, 150) 29.7 PPG with 4.7 RPG and Aston Soles (6-1, 165) 8 PPG with 9.0 RPG, followed by Ethan Siau (5-11, 150) 8.2 PPG with 2.5 RPG and is on the cusp of having a break-out season. The rest of his squad are Camdin Harmon, Ax Wolpert, Brayden Mizell, Connor Teague, Jagger Edmonds, and the lone sophomore is Tyler Green. (6-0, 215) 1 PPG with 5.0 RPG

Asked about the trajectory of his team, Coach Gillam said, “We have a great group of kids who will do anything we ask and always keep trying to come back.” That being said, “a key for us to work on is our defense.” Once this senior class graduate, Coach Gillam is still optimistic, the “JV team is promising with some good players coming up.”