CHHS tradition
Published 8:17 pm Monday, February 16, 2009
The Lady Trojans of Charles Henderson are headed back to Troy and the AHSAA South Regional. This is the fourth straight trip to the regional for the Lady Trojans.
Head coach Dyneshia Jones said it is always a good thing to get to Troy University’s Trojan Arena.
“It is always exciting to go to the regional,” Jones said. “No matter what winning four games now will get us a state championship. And we have been working hard to get there.”
The Lady Trojans (14-11) have made the South Regional four straight years now, but Jones said they have not been able to get out of the region in any of the previous three years.
“It has been a habit for us to get there, but we want to get over the hump,” Jones said. “I am sure there are a lot of teams that would love to be where we are and all the teams in this region are good, which will make it a challenge. But we have never made it to Birmingham and we want to do that this year.”
Birmingham and the Final 48 is the goal, but to get there the first step runs through No. 3 LeFlore (21-2).
“We saw them play and we know they have a tall girl who loves to block shots,” Jones said. “We have made some adjustments to deal with that and we feel we are ready for tomorrow’s game.”
Making the South Regional can cause a lot of pressure, but Jones said her team is ready to face any challenge put in front of it.
“Everybody out there is in ninth through 12th grade and there are no six-on-five matchups allowed, so we know that if we run our game we have a chance of winning every game we play,” she said. “We know that we will have to be prepared and we are doing our best to get the girls prepared. If we win tomorrow we will have to then get prepared for our next opponent and so on. We will not be surprised.”
Another possible distraction could be the records of the other teams in the South Regional. LeFlore is 21-2, No. 2 Faith Academy is 27-2 and Carroll-Ozark is 26-3, but Jones said she has stressed to the girls that records mean nothing right now.
“When you are here you can’t worry about the records of the other teams,” she said. “We may not have as many wins, but we played a lot of bigger schools to get us ready for this moment. I would rather play bigger schools to get prepared for the end of the season.”
The Lady Trojans and LeFlore tip off at noon today from Trojan Arena on the campus of Troy University.