Parkers Chapel ready for stretch run

A lot of coaches have listed health as a potential factor in their team’s success. Parkers Chapel coach Justin Welch might be the first to introduce “contact tracing” as a concern.

The Lady Trojans improved to 8-3 overall after a 56-32 victory at Bearden on Friday. Welch finally has his entire roster available after seeing as many as three starters miss games due to COVID protocol over a span of two weeks.

PC lost twice during that stretch to Spring Hill and Fordyce. The coach said health and player availability will be keys to the rest of this unusual season.

“You never know when you’re going to get that phone call and they say a kid is quarantined,” he said.

“I hate to say it but every time my phone vibrates, I cringe because I don’t know. It could be because a kid sat beside somebody in class, which is out of my control, which is very frustrating. We try to take all the precautions that I can. During lunch, I don’t even let them go to the cafeteria. They come up to the gym and we spread out in the bleachers.”

Foul trouble was a factor in the Lady Trojans’ home loss to Spring Hill. PC followed that with a loss to Fordyce, who Welch said might be the top team in the league.

“Obviously, you never want to lose ballgames in conference play. I felt like coming out of the Christmas break, we had some health issues there. I knew it was going to be a tough little stretch,” said Welch. “But our girls have really responded with a lot of energy in practice. We had our best two practices this past week that we had all season. That competitiveness in practice is going to start rolling over in the ballgames. I really think we’re going to hit our groove in the back stretch of conference and then we’ll see what happens. We’ve been playing better in practice and that’s going to correlate to better game play. At least that’s what I’m hoping.”

It would help if the schedule was less fluid. Cancellations and postponements due to COVID make play uncertain and inconsistent.

“I really feel like we’re going to start getting into that rhythm. I’m hoping if we start to play Tuesday-Friday, Tuesday-Friday, we can get a rhythm. We haven’t been able to do that,” said Welch. “We’ve only played two ballgames in a week twice. All the others have been spread out. I’m looking forward to getting into a groove.”

Parkers Chapel goes to Gurdon on Tuesday and has a non-conference game at Foreman scheduled for Thursday.

“Anytime you go on the road, you never know. We’ve never been to Gurdon and to tell you the truth, I don’t know much about them,” Welch said.

As for the rest of the league, the coach felt Fordyce might be above the crowd with PC, Spring Hill and Woodlawn scrapping for second. The Lady Trojans are scheduled to play them all again, hopefully, with their full roster intact.

“We have Woodlawn again at their place. They’re a good basketball team,” said Welch. “We beat them at home but anytime you go to their place, they shoot the ball really well. That’s one of the games I have marked on my calendar that we need to play really well.”

Upcoming Events