The Bryant High School varsity basketball teams will play pre-season scrimmage games tonight at Perryville then have two weeks before they open the 2009-10 season.The Hornets open on Nov. 30 with a game in the Searcy Tournament. The Lady Hornets’ opener isn’t until Dec. 3 in a tournament in Bentonville.
The Hornets’ new head coach Ron Marvel said of the scrimmage, “For me, it’s just to see what kind of team I actually have. I want to know if we’ve made any progress from the time we started practicing until now.[more]
“And it’ll kind of give us a chance to get the kids into some action that’s not really meaningful,” he added. “I mean it’s not a real stressful situation because you can kind of look at it like a practice game. It’s a good game for us.”
The Hornets return four players that started at one time or another last season. Senior point guard K Ron Lairy is the leader of the group along with senior forward Kendall Butzlaff. They started most of the team’s games last season. Dontay Renaurd, another senior forward, started at times and logged a lot of minutes off the bench.
Another starter, senior guard Brandon Parish will join the team after football.
The team also includes seniors Kyle Hampton, Reid Prescott, Connor Rayburn and Devin Yount with Chris Rycraw set to join the team after football as well. The team’s juniors include Houston Garner, Kyle Nossaman and Cameron Wood with Josh Hampton joining the team after football. Sophomores are Brantley Cozart, Derek Johnson, George Lucas, Rasheed Massey, L.J. McLaughlin, Eric Moore, Quinten Motto, Travis Royal and Logan Trudell.
“Our schedule is starting too late this year,” Marvel added. “I know it was done because of football but we should’ve started a little bit sooner. It’ll be helpful in the long run for the two or three kids that play football but for the kids that are here, they’ve been practicing hard and they deserve to play right now.”
The Lady Hornets lost just two players from a team that reached the Class 7A State Tournament last year. Seniors Haley Montgomery, Brooke Parish, Hannah Goshien, Kenzee Calley, Shanika Johnson and Alana Morris will form a strong, experienced nucleus of the team.
Juniors include Abbi Stearns and Taylor Neal with sophomores Callie Hogancamp, Brittney Ball, Kayla Sory, Raegan Barker, London Abernathy, Casey Lee and Breanna Blundell.
Of the scrimmage, head coach Blake Condley said, “We’re just tired of banging on each other, practicing against each other. The girls are ready to play somebody else.
“I’m anxious to see what things we need to come back and work on, see where we’re at, see what we’re doing well, see what we’re not doing very well. Then we’ll have that couple of weeks to work on it. I think it’ll be good just for the girls to put the uniforms on and be able to play somebody besides each other.”
