By GRAHAM POWELL
Leader sportswriter
The Cabot Lady Panthers basketball team, according to its head coach, had a positive experience at the school’s three-day, 52-team basketball camp last week.
At the camp, Cabot hosted a large number of its games that were played last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at Panther Arena, but also had games played at the Cabot Junior High North and South gyms, the Veterans Park Community Center, as well as the old CHS gymnasium.
“It was a great three days,” said Lady Panthers coach Carla Crowder. “We had 52 teams, and it was wonderful for our community. We had people eating all over town, staying in hotels. It was really good for our community.”
The Lady Panthers played a total of nine games at the three-day camp, and Crowder said her team did well overall and is continuously working to get better through the summer.
“We did well,” Crowder said. “We’re working to get better. We’re playing a lot of people, and so a lot of people are improving and that’s what we’re real pleased to see.”
Crowder said she had 18 participants on her varsity squad at the camp, and that all of them got better in certain ways, including the underclassmen.
“I thought a lot of different people got better,” Crowder said. “I thought we had some young kids get better. I feel like we’re all working to improve. I can’t really mention one person because I think there are a lot of us that are trying to do the little things better and are just trying to get better as a team.”
The format for the games played at the team camp consisted of two 20-minute halves with a continuous clock, and scoring was kept in every game, but Crowder said she didn’t pay too much attention to the scoring, because she wanted to make sure everyone on her roster got a chance to play in the competitive setting, and that the team camp was for everyone involved to get more competitive experience at that level and to find ways to improve on the court in some form or fashion.
“The record (at the camp) doesn’t really matter,” she said. “You’re just trying to compete in every game, and try to compete in every half, and that’s what we worked on. You can’t always win the way we played. We’re working to try and get people better.”
Crowder said the camp was definitely a positive experience for her team.
“It was definitely positive,” she said. “I’d say our kids worked really hard, and it was a great experience for them.”
As far as things her team is working to improve on, Crowder said it’s a constant effort in every aspect, but that she feels her team did a better job in several areas while at camp.
“Well, there are all kinds of stuff to work on,” she said. “We’re working on trying not to get beat off the dribble penetration and making sure we always rebound, and we’re working on our shooting, trying to get better on our shot selection, and I think we did a lot better job of that.”