BASKETBALL

› Tennessee Tech sophomore point guard

Akia Harris from Chattanooga made up for lost time due to blood-clot surgery by averaging 34.1 minutes per game in the 2017-18 basketball season, and she was honored this spring as the Cookeville school’s comeback athlete of the year. As noted in an extensive story about her on the TTU athletics website, Harris scored 22 points with 5-of-5 3-point shooting against Eastern Kentucky on Dec. 30, nine months after two surgeries to drain a blood clot that extended from her left thigh to her ankle. She had to do much of her 2017 spring-semester schoolwork from home and couldn’t do any basketball activities until Sept. 25 but averaged 8.6 points a game. “We talk all the time in our program about life not being about the uncontrollable events that happen to you but about your response to those events,” Tech coach

Kim Rosamond said in the website story. “Akia inspired me with her positive response to a very scary situation.” Harris played for Girls Preparatory School and Hamilton Heights.

› Gracen Hobbs is going from Lakeview-Fort Oglethorpe High School to playing basketball at Georgia Northwestern Technical College in 2018-19. After missing most of her junior season with an injury, she helped LFO win its subregion and reach the Class AAA state playoffs this past winter. She also played volleyball. “I think she’s really going to be able to help them,” LFO coach

Dewayne Watkins said in a GNTC release. “She has an ability to score, and she shoots the ball pretty well. She’ll able to add some scoring to the team, as well as just be a solid defensive player.” Lady Bobcats coach David Stephenson praised Watkins and his program and said of Hobbs, “She can take the ball to the rack, and she gives us another scorer from the wing position that we need, since we’re losing one of our wings. … I think we’re getting another steal.”