What was the secret to the Southeast Guilford Girls Basketball Team’s Success???:The Secret to the Southeast Success was Confidence and Conditioning

The Southeast Guilford girls basketball team was very successful this past season, and all you have to do is look at their overall team record of (30-1), and that begins to spell out the success right there….

But, what was the secret to the Southeast Success???

If you watched any of their games this past season, you couldn’t help but notice the look in the eyes of senior Falcon leader Kennedi Simmons….Simmons exudes Confidence and she sees everything around her, and she takes it all in….The kid is completely focused on what she is doing, and she does her basketball work with total confidence and with the approach of a skilled technician.

Kennedi Simmons sees all of the things going around her and she sees them in a 360 degree view….Big eyes and they seem to be at all times wide-open, and it appears that Kennedi Simmons is one that will never back away from a challenge…There seems to be no obstacle too large standing in front of her….That confidence factor, that she possesses, gives her an edge over just about every competitor that she faces…

I have not seen very many teams that can shut down Kennedi Simmons…She might start out the contest like she is going to have a bad game, then all of the sudden you look up and half way through the fourth quarter, she has 15-20 points and it all goes right back to that confidence factor….

We are sure that Kennedi Simmons and her fellow Falcons are very confident that they will still get to meet E.E. Smith(31-1), out of Faytteville, in the girls 3-A State Championship game, and let’s band together with them, in their hopes to make that game eventually become a reality.

Today/Friday March 13, the NCHSAA said they would do everything in their power to make sure that the Championship Games get played. The NCHSAA said their biggest concern would be for the seniors, like Southeast’s Simmons and Shunte Bethea, and hoping that these two SEG seniors can get this game in…When the Championship Game might be played is still up in the air, but we know for now, it will be sometime after April 6.

The NCHSAA said today, that next week they will be spend time studying the calendar and work to get the Championship games in, sometime in the near future. They will keep watching that target date of April 6 and at the given time, they will hope to have a said place to play the games, and final date when the games will be played, but as for now, everything is still in limbo, and up-in-the-air…

Come April 6 they hope to have a plan in place and be able to move forward with the Championship basketball games, and the resumption of the 2020 Spring Sports calendar….They have no new calendar for the Spring sports in place at this time, and the NCHSAA said today that the reason they allowed the Spring Sports to continue on, on this Friday, instead calling for a total shutdown after yesterday’s games, was that they hoped the Spring Sports coaches would be able to meet with their players/athletes today, and provide a plan about what they wanted them to be doing over the next two weeks, between tonight at Midnight, and Monday April 6…Today the coaches could explain what all is going on, and make sure there was a plan in place for the time off…Another key point was that the NCHSAA wanted to make sure that there was equity across the state of North Carolina and that every school was following the same/similar protocol…

We were talking back up top about the Secrets to Southeast Guilford’s success, and one of those, is a factor that will have to be addressed during this layoff between now and Monday April 6…And that would be Conditioning….To me, that has been a real key for SEG, all season long and for that matter, a real key to the Falcons’ success, over the past two seasons…

One of those big secrets might not be a secret at all, but if you didn’t know on the way into the game versus Southeast Guilford, you would have figured it by halftime, and you would be certain of what just hit you, by the time you were leaving the game…

Conditioning.

Some teams are constantly trying to find it and make sure that their players have it, or can be rounded into it…For Southeast Guilford, they are in great shape and with just 11 bodies on their team roster, it has been imperative that the Falcons could go, and their go-to has been the completely conditioned athlete, Raven Preston…

Preston is in such good shape, she can play her guts out, and she still has more to give…She never really looks winded…Due to her overlapping seasons of AAU basketball and Spring Soccer, she has no choice but to be in shape, and her conditioning makes her a totally different animal than what you would usually find, on the girl’s basketball court…

Play your guts out on defense and then you might not have anything left for the offensive end….Not Preston…She can go on both ends of the floor with equal oxygen distribution, and she never really looks tired out there….She plays her guts out on defense and she will still have 15-20 points a-game, left for scoring on offense…

I was trying this last Sunday on the outdoor court…Play tough and hard-nosed defense and then transition to offense…My shot was terrible…In warmups I was hitting all kinds of nice shots, but nobody was covering me and I was not having to play defense, and it wasn’t because I was not in shape…I was OK with that part, it is just the fact that playing the defense, and playing it hard can affect your shot…But not for Raven Preston…

Preston can play the offense and the defense and she looks like she is just as good on one part, as she is on the other….That is good stuff, because if I was coaching, I would look at putting in three players who were just able to focus on defense and then try and pull them out when we got a chance, and send in three offensive weapons…Play your guts out on defense and they give me some kids that can score and we will let them do that…

But with Preston, you have both ends covered…She can do both with proficiency, and she handles both the offensive and defensive roles with excellence….And it rubs off on her teammates, and it all goes back to that conditioning…Preston has it and it rubs off on Sydney Roberts, and on Jessica Hopkins, Shunte Bethea is in the best shape conditioning-wise, that I have ever seen and the fifth member of the starting five, Kennedi Simmons, she is so confident that she believes she is conditioned beyond her self-limits, and that confident belief allows her to go longer and do more than others….

So, as we close out this mini-magazine for a Friday, we have discovered and learned two key elements today, that have led to the success of the Southeast Guilford girls basketball team, and that would be as we drive those two key points home, Confidence and Conditioning….

Again, the close goes, Confidence and Conditioning….