Lady Wildcats hold basketball camp.

For the record, El Dorado's girls went 2-2 Tuesday in the Lady Wildcats Team Camp at Wildcat Arena. Of course, basketball records in the summer don't mean much, if anything. Coach Destinee Rogers said her team is on the right track.

"We won two and we lost two today. The two we lost, we were right there in it until the very end. We just made some mental mistakes and kind of got tired in that fourth game," Rogers said. "I thought we improved at this team camp. We're getting better. At the start of the summer, we were making a lot of mistakes. Those mistakes have kind of slowed up. We look 10 times better now than we did in May. That's all I can ask for. I'm concerned about us getting better this summer and getting out there and competing. We didn't back down from anybody. We played hard. That's all I can ask for."

El Dorado opened play with wins over Magnolia and Beebe. The Lady Wildcats lost to former coach Stephen Harshaw's Southwood squad and to Star City.

Rogers said she had a full roster of players on hand, including: Tasia Richardson, Grace Murray. Jessica Morton, Diamond Hawthorne, Adrianne Larry, Breya Clark, Kie'Arra

Boone, Martie Wade, LaDiamond Maker, Amyiah Williams, Julianne Spencer, Ashley Miller and A'mya Evans.

"I was really proud of Grace Murray today. She kind of had a day (Monday) but she came out today and she was the Grace I know she can be. She played extremely hard and she did some things that raised an eyebrow or two. I was really proud of her effort today," said Rogers.

"I was really proud of Richardson's effort. I've been really tough on her. She's one of my point guards. She's doing well. She's taking everything in and growing up a lot. Kie'Arra Boone controlled the boards for us. She did real well on the block and I always have to say something about Diamond Hawthorne on the defensive end. She does a great job of locking down the other team's offensive player and crashing the boards and doing all the dirty work. Also, Adrianne Larry wasn't here (Monday). You could tell we're a different team with her here today. She was really aggressive and brought a lot of spark to the team."

Rogers said her team has not pressed during the summer in order to focus on halfcourt defense. Another area of focus will be on replacing Mekaylan Hicks, who has moved on to the University of Central Arkansas.

"It's definitely difficult. It's difficult when you don't have that go-to player you can depend on to give you 20 points a game," said Rogers. "But, what I do like about this team, we're not depending on one or two players anymore. It's more like a team effort - share the ball. We play a lot faster now. So, yeah, it's going to be tough to replace her individually, but collectively, I like the way we're playing as a team. We're playing a lot faster than what we did last year."

El Dorado will look to get into one more camp, perhaps in August. In the meantime, Rogers said the summer has been productive, including the last two days.

"The camp went really well. We had some really good teams here," she said. "I told my girls, I'm purposely putting us up against the best teams in the camp. This is just making us better. I don't want to go up against teams that we're going to beat. I want to go up against teams that are going to make us better. I thought we accomplished that with this camp. I'm really excited about getting started in August and then rolling on into the season in November."