Local teams are busy Monday and Tuesday
The three high schools in Gordon County are out of school next week for Thanksgiving.
But they each have basketball teams playing games.
Everyone has now put in three full weeks of workouts and December, when everyone really cranks it up, is just around the corner, but a few games will be played early this coming week before Thursday’s holiday.
Calhoun, as usual, is still a little over a week away from getting their season started and traditionally, the Yellow Jackets start late because they are waiting for football players who are busy with playoff games to join the team.
So they don’t open up until next Tuesday, Nov. 29, when they host Excel Christian Academy at The Hive, but head coach Vince Layson’s team did take on another opponent Thursday night when they went to Chattooga to face the Indians in their only scrimmage of the year.
The Calhoun girls will get busy right away with three games in four days as they participate in the Jefferson EMC Tipoff Classic at Jefferson High School, which begins Saturday. They will play Westside out of Anderson, South Carolina at high noon Saturday in their season opener.
The Sonoraville High School girls basketball team is also in a tournament that starts Saturday and goes into next week. The Phoenix are at the Armuchee Holiday tournament with a 5:30 p.m. game Saturday to open the 2022-23 schedule.
The Phoenix boys play two-homegames-in-two-days to start their winter schedule with a date against Armuchee on Monday and then a contest Tuesday versus Woodland. Both of those games start at 6 p.m.
The Gordon Central boys and girls were the only teams to have actual games last week with the Warriors clobbering Dalton Academy, 83-22, Tuesday night to start the season and both the boys and girls team had home games Thursday night against Oakwood Christian. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
The boys will host the annual Ray Tucker tournament Monday and Tuesday at Gordon Central High School before they are off for the rest of Thanksgiving Week.
The Warriors were clicking on all cylinders in dismantling Dalton Academy Tuesday night in their opener in their second year under head coach Wes Greer.
The Warriors opened with a scrimmage win over Woodland last Thursday, but were without some regulars like senior Mac McDaniel and sophomore Matthew Hammock, and put 46 on the board, but Tuesday night, with those guys in the lineup, they topped 80.
The GC girls, after playing Dalton Academy Tuesday, were in the North Murray tournament Friday and Saturday, facing former Region 7-2A matches Pepperell on Friday and Coosa on
Saturday. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
For Calhoun, Layson knows who his players are and got a chance to see them action Thursday for the first time when they had their practice game at Chattooga.
The team has three starters returning including 6-foot9 Dylan Faulkner, who recently signed his letter-ofintent to play college hoops at Lipscomb. The team went to the 5A Final Four last year and are now without 6-foot6 impact forward Peyton Law, who is playing in college at Freid-Hardman, but because they have Faulkner returning, the team again has aspirations of a deep playoff run.
But for right now, they’re just trying to get themselves ready for that first game against Excel Christian Academy, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 29 at 7 p.m.
Besides Faulkner, guard Caden Schild, forward Brooks Crawford, guard Jake Jones, forward Braxton Medders, and forward Jake Jones are the other seniors on the Calhoun basketball team.
It appears most of the players they are waiting for to come from football are in the sophomore class where Emaree Winston, Andrew Purdy, Jax Bishop, and Makadan Griffin are all still displaying their talents on the gridiron.
The Calhoun girls team was a young team last year with just one senior and a few freshmen in the lineup, but it looks like they will be young again this year with a few new freshman on the roster for head coach Jaime Echols.
The Yellow Jackets will
have experience where it may matter the most in high school though and that is in the backcourt with highscoring senior Tabby Curtis and fellow senior Lauren Watson giving them a pair of two-year starting guards who are not only offensive threats, but able to control and push the tempo.
And they will have a tall task right out of the chute against the Westside Rams out of South Carolina after the Lady Rams were 28-0 and a state champion last season in the Palmetto state.
After playing Westside on Saturday, the Lady Jackets will return to Jefferson High School Monday for their second-round game and then wrap up play in the tournament on Tuesday.
They are then off for nine days before they play their home opener at The Hive on Thursday, Dec. 1 against South Paulding.
For Sonoraville, both teams have a lot of players returning after they each had a number of underclassmen doting their rosters last winter.
The girls tip things off Saturday evening in Armuchee with a 5:30 p.m. contest against Unity Christian before they return for two more days of play on first Monday and then Tuesday. On Monday, they will play Armuchee at 6:30 p.m. and then they have their last game of the week at 5 p.m. Tuesday against Adairsville.
The boys, which was joined by a few guys from the football team this week, is looking to get off to a good start with a pair of home matchups right away.
The team had a bunch of new-to-varsity players and they finished with just eight wins, but the hope is this year that year of experience pays off and the consistent winning begins.