Local teams compete at Troy Team Camp

Published 12:52 pm Monday, June 10, 2024

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The Charles Henderson Trojans, Pike County Bulldogs and Pike Liberal Arts Patriots all competed at the Troy University Team Basketball Camp over the weekend.

The trio of teams were part of a 70-team camp that saw high schools from all over Alabama, as well as surrounding states, converge on Troy for the camp. Other teams from around the area included Enterprise, Pike Road, Dothan, Headland, GW Long, Headland, Carroll, Luverne, Straughn and Eufaula. There were also teams from Louisiana, Georgia and Florida. Games were played at Trojan Arena, the Troy Recreation Center, Charles Henderson High School and Charles Henderson Middle School.

Charles Henderson went 3-2 on the weekend with wins over Wetumpka, Bullock County and Wilcox-Central along with losses to South Walton (Fla.) and Central-Phenix City.

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“For our first time playing (this summer), I thought it went about as expected,” Charles Henderson coach Tim Fayson said. “We had some good moments and not so good moments, but overall I thought we played pretty well.”

Charles Henderson will head to Auburn for another play date before traveling to Enterprise next Wednesday, June 19, for Enterprise’s Annual Team Camp. CHHS will close out summer workouts in Birmingham for the AHSAA Playdate on June 21.

Cody Cross and the Charles Henderson Trojans went 3-2 during the Team Camp in Troy. (Photos by Josh Boutwell)

“We’re really just trying to acclimate the new guys we have,” Fayson said. “It’s really a new team, one starter coming back in Cody Cross. A lot of the guys are coming up from (junior varsity), so they’re moving into new and bigger roles and playing varsity basketball for the first time. We just have to get them acclimated and get them more reps and set the foundation for how we want to play moving into the season.”

Pike County went 1-1 during the team camp with a win over Pike Lib and a loss to Class 7A’s Carver High School from Montgomery. Carver now features the combined athletes of Carver-Montgomery and the former Sidney Lanier High School.

I thought we did pretty good,” Pike County coach Janasky Fleming said. “We’ve lost some players to transfers, so that’s knocked us down a little bit. I was interested to see how it would go with us missing some pieces and I thought we did well.

“Against Pike Lib, we were a little bit quicker than they are and we were able to exploit that. We lost to Carver by nine points. So, we saw that we can play against high quality competition.”

Fleming said he wants to play against elite athletes like the ones at Carver.

“I want to play people like that. Last year when we lost to Hillcrest, they had the one kid that was out of this world,” he recalled. “I want to see teams and athletes like that and it can only help us.”

Pike County will host Ashford for a play date this Thursday at 2 p.m.

“We have to change how we play a little bit,” Fleming said of offseason goals. “We’ve always been guard oriented but now we’re all guards. We have to get to the point where we recognize defenses and are able to adjust to it and be more forceful when we’re on defense and trap the ball. We want to play to our strengths on offense, which is layups.”

Along with competing at the Troy Team Camp, Pike Lib played a pair of games at Highland Home in another playdate the day before. The Patriots played seven games in three days, going 3-4 during that span despite being shorthanded for many of the games.

“We’ll have 13 kids that will probably make up our varsity team and I think the most we had for any of our games was seven,” PLAS coach Jonny Mitchell said. “We had some injuries and also kids doing football stuff and baseball stuff. We were just trying to execute the best we could and play hard and I think our guys did that, but were just outgunned some. I’m proud of the way they played.

Pike’s Jackson Mitchell drives against Pike County. (Photo by Josh Boutwell)

“One thing we have at Pike is all the kids and all the coaches want to put in the effort to be really good in every sport. Sometimes that causes things to conflict with everything that’s going on in the summer because everyone is trying to get better. We just want to compete and work hard, though.”

Pike Lib will head to Auburn for the Team Camp there on Thursday.

“From a coaching aspect we want to figure out what we do well and try to get an idea of what our possible rotation could be and see if some of the kids that come up from JV are ready to be in the rotation in close games,” Mitchell said of the goals during summer. “Other than that, from a player standpoint, we just want them to be where their feet are. When you’re here, work your tail off and compete and get better.”