The girls basketball team’s season ended after a loss to Flower Mound 55-49 in its final district game Feb. 4. The Lady Hawks finished the season in seventh, with a 11-21 overall record and 3-12 record in district play.
“I was proud that we just continuously kept playing — that we didn’t give up,” guard Monet Brown said. “We [didn’t give up] on each other, and just put our heads down.”
Last season, the team went undefeated in district play and advanced to the regional semifinals of the playoffs. However, the team graduated six seniors and had an influx of inexperienced talent this season.
“We’ve grown a lot because we had to,” Brown said. “After the first few games, it was like we have nothing to lose now. We had to [work] together, not get annoyed with each other, not get frustrated and just come together and play basketball as a team.”
To start the season, the Lady Hawks played 10 top-50 ranked opponents prior to the district play, which head coach Lisa Branch said was a rambunctious start to the season for the team.
“The resilience [of the team stuck out to me,]” Branch said. “Any team could have folded early in the season with the schedule we had, but we didn’t. The fact that they didn’t makes me a better coach, and it gives me something to look forward to.”
The team started the district season with a win against Coppell, but only managed to win two more games for the rest of the district season. Guard Sydnee Jones said the ups and downs of the season took a toll on the team mentally.
“Our message was, ‘just have fun at the end of the day — win or lose,’” Jones said. “We’re doing this because we love the game and we want to have fun with it. We shouldn’t take [losses] too seriously. We shouldn’t destroy ourselves by not having fun just because we’re winning or losing or we’re not playing or we should.”
This year the team had two seniors, Brown and Jones, both who have been on varsity for four years. With their high school careers’ coming to a close with the loss to Flower Mound, Jones said it was an emotional moment.
“It was surprising the shock of really being done with high school basketball hasn’t really hit me yet,” Jones said. “The realization that high school is almost over and I’m about to graduate [had me] in shock [because] it was actually over.”
Heading into next season, the team will potentially have 11 returning upperclassmen and multiple players moving up from the JV squad. Branch said she is excited for what’s to come.
“There were definitely a couple of games that could have gone either way, [where] we had a chance to win, but it didn’t fall our way,” Branch said. “We’re taking that with us and not disappointed at all. Everything we did this year was a learning opportunity to build from.”
