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November 12, 2008

Girls Prep Basketball Previews: New coaches take over at Clay City, Shakamak

By David Hughes

Two new coaches — at least new to head coaching — are on the sidelines for Class A Clay City Sectional girls high school basketball teams in the Tribune-Star’s coverage area this season.

Chris Ames, 36, is now in charge at Clay City and Troy Fougerousse, 41, has taken over at Shakamak.

Ames served as Clay City’s boys varsity assistant for the past eight seasons and coached junior high boys before that. He replaced Keith Jones.

“It’s a change of direction,” Ames told the Tribune-Star last week. “What we’ve done with the boys program, we want to see if some of that will work with the girls.”

So far, Ames enjoys the new job he’s undertaken.

“The joy of it is the teaching in practices,” he said. “It’s been a blast and the girls are working hard.”

Like Ames, Fougerousse already was at the same school when he accepted the new job. For the last seven years, he’s been Shakamak’s girls junior varsity coach. Before that, he coached junior high boys and girls. He replaced Jon Miller.

“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do,” explained Fougerousse, a 1985 Shakamak graduate and cousin of Shakamak baseball coach Matt Fougerousse.

“It’s kind of a different style than what they’ve been used to here. We played a lot of zone [defense] last year. We’ll play more man-to-man this year.”

Below is how each Clay City Sectional team in the Tribune-Star’s coverage area appears to stack up this season:



• Clay City — Coming off an 11-10 campaign that included seven losses in their last nine games in 2007-08, the Eels hope to bounce back under Ames.

Britney Glass, a 5-foot-11 senior center, is a returning starter.

“We hope to get some leadership from her,” Ames mentioned. “We need her to pass along her knowledge to all the freshmen we have.”

Also expected to start for the Eels are 5-9 junior Kelly McCullough, who missed most of last season with a knee injury, and 5-10 senior Devyn Bridgewater, who’s playing her first season of high school basketball after being home-schooled previously, at forwards and 5-7 freshman Brielle Drelick and 5-4 freshman Carmela Roeschlein at guards.

Ames said the top substitutes should be sisters Sloan Miller (5-7 junior) and Allie Miller (5-9 freshman) up front and freshman Abby Reed (5-4 freshman) in the backcourt.

“Hopefully, it’ll be a balanced attack,” Ames noted. “Our biggest goals are to try to be competitive and get after it defensively.

“Our biggest concern is inexperience. With so many freshmen [four on the eight-person varsity roster] and so many girls who haven’t had the opportunity to play much in the past, it’s just different at the varsity level.”

Clay City’s first game will be Friday at Eminence.

• North Central — Gretchen Brown is back for her fourth season at the helm of the Thunderbirds. They finished 9-12 in 2007-08.

The T-Birds will rely heavily on the returning-starter trio of 5-11 junior forward/center Jocelyn Boyll, 5-3 junior guard Katie Brown and 5-6 junior guard/forward Amber Kemp. Boyll and Brown carried a double-figure scoring average last season.

Coach Brown said the other starters are likely to be 5-6 junior Maria Drake, the sixth girl last season, at guard and 5-10 sophomore Megan Stone on the frontline.

Coach Brown said the primary sources of point production “could be anybody on any night.”

“We’re just not consistent at scoring,” she explained. “Even though we have some experience, we’re still young We want to do the small things right, like take care of the basketball.”

White River Valley, which was the T-Birds’ season-opening opponent Tuesday, should be favored to repeat as sectional champion, coach Brown admitted last week.

“We should be in there with them, I hope,” she added. “We’ve got a pretty good nucleus of girls.”

• Shakamak — Fougerousse started out at a slight disadvantage because the Lakers advanced to the Class A regional in volleyball, therefore giving him limited time with those girls who switched over to basketball after volleyball ended.

But he has four returning starters, so that helps make up for his lack of time with some of the girls. The four are senior forward Jessie Gilbert (who averaged about 16 points per game last season), junior guard Marki Collins (about 10 ppg last season), junior point guard Casey Fougerousse (about 10 ppg last season and the coach’s daughter) and junior forward Kristi Pearson (who won’t be able to play until at least the first of December because of an illness).

“Jessie’s going to get some help,” coach Fougerousse promised. “But we hope to let her touch the ball a couple times before we put it up.

“With those four girls coming back, we do have quite a bit of experience and we’ve got a pretty athletic freshman class as well.”

Also in the mix to start, at least early in the season, are juniors Chelsea Joyner (5-8), Cassandra Holdaway (5-9) and Kathleen Gilreath (5-5) and freshmen Mikayla Crane (5-9), Jade Gambill (5-7), Morgan Stanifer (5-3) and Jazmine Martin (5-5).

“My biggest concern is if we can play at the level we need to to be successful,” coach Fougerousse said. “We can’t play at 80-percent [intensity] and be successful.”

Shakamak, which ended up 7-13 last season, opened its 2008-09 campaign Tuesday at Vincennes Rivet.

• Union — Third-year coach Benji Boyd guided the Bulldogs to a 10-10 mark in 2007-08.

This season, he’ll continue to rely heavily on 5-7 guard Makaylee Pirtle, a senior who averaged 21.2 points per game last season.

Another returning senior starter is 5-7 guard Megan Gambill, who tallied 13.7 ppg last season.

“Makaylee is a scorer,” Boyd emphasized. “She’s very good at it. Megan’s good at getting her the ball and she can score herself too. She’s already our career assists leader.”

Also back from last season is 5-10 senior forward Cassie Parr.

“She bangs inside,” Boyd pointed out. “She should be our top rebounder, although she was a little foul-prone last year.”

Rounding out Union’s starting lineup are 5-9 sophomore guard Ashli Scott, who started last season, and 5-7 senior forward Gabrielle Smith, who started some last season.

The Bulldogs will try to make up for the loss of junior Brenna Siscoe, who transferred to the Indiana Academy honor school in Muncie.

Boyd named top subs as 5-9 sophomore Shayna Nicol on the frontline and 5-0 freshman Cheyenne Goodman in the backcourt.

“I think we’ve got a chance to be above .500,” Boyd assessed, “but some things have to fall in place. We lost a lot of rebounds with Brenna … and we have trouble defending the post with bigger players.”

Boyd agreed with the other coaches that WRV, until proven otherwise, is the class of the field for the sectional in a few months.

“White River Valley will be tough to beat,” he acknowledged. “We’ll have trouble with everybody from our sectional.”

The Bulldogs will tip off their schedule today at Cloverdale.

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