A mixture of old and new hopes to be winning recipe for Lady Silver Foxes
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
Lamar – Over last few years I have come to learn something when it relates to the Lamar Lady Silver Foxes girls’ basketball team; that is to never put too much stock into record before the region game begins, because if you do they will sneak up on you faster than any fox ever would.
Like in previous years, Lamar is slated to play one of the most difficult non-conference schedules in the entire Darlington and Florence county area and while the Lady Silver Foxes record may take a hit because of it, their play grows due to the challenges of facing such bigger and deeper teams.
That type of scheduling has not only helped Lamar grow as a basketball team from a skillset standpoint, it helps the Lady Silver Foxes gain confidence in what they are doing. It lets them realize that if they can do it against those teams then they can definitely do it in the region.
“We feel good about going into the region again,” Lamar girls basketball head coach Randolph Scott said. “We feel like we will be one of the top two teams in the region when we get there and one of our goals is to win the region and get us a good spot in the playoffs where you don’t have to do all of that traveling.”
This year’s team looks to have all of the characteristics of being very talented, maybe even as talented as the team that made it to the upper-state championship game a few years ago. The biggest challenge for Lamar this year is to overcome some of their youth.
“We are a young team,” Scott said. “We have three seniors on this group, one that starts and bunch of freshman and sophomores and two or three juniors, but overall we have a nucleus of a pretty good team that if we continue to work some great things will come out of it.”
Scott does not want to put the cart before the buggy, however. While he thinks the potential is high for his team, he wants to keep the expectations in check and basically on a step by step basis.
“Well right now for this team our goal is to get into the playoffs, win the region,” Scott said. Expectations are hard to look at right now. They are good, but they can be better and we are going to continue to strive. Our motto is ‘positive thinking, positive results’”.
And according to Scott, there is only one way to make sure that his team does not get ahead of itself.
“We are just going to take it one game at a time and we are going to see how it comes out,” Scott said.
The region for Lamar this season is somewhat different as the new realignment has made one of the Lady Silver Foxes biggest rivals a regional opponent; the Timmonsville Whirlwinds, who have been a juggernaut in girls basketball for years.
“Well you have Timmonsville coming over and you can’t sleep on Timmonsville,” Scott said. “McBee is still going to be one of the ones you are going to have to watch out for.”
Now the only thing left for Lamar is to hit the court, work hard every day and learn from every experience. If the Lady Silver Foxes are able to do that, Scott sees no reason why they cannot have a strong playoff run this season.