NEW MADISON – The Tri-Village Lady Patriots basketball program is hosting the Tri-Village Varsity Girls Basketball Shootout this Friday and Saturday, June 21-22. The Tri-Village Patriot Summer Shootout is open to the public at no charge.
“We have a two day shootout,” said Tri-Village Lady Patriots head basketball coach Brad Gray. “Between the two days we have 13 teams coming.”
The Tri-Village Patriot Summer Shootout, now in its 10th year started out as a one day event and with its popularity was extended to two days several years ago.
“It used to be a one day but we have enough interest that we extended it to a two day shootout,” Gray said. “We are looking forward to hosting it and having some pretty good teams here challenging our kids a little bit.”
The shootout will showcase some of the area’s best girls basketball teams as the two day event continues to attract excellent basketball programs and will have a concession stand open for the public.
“No charge to come in,” noted Coach Gray. “We’ll have a concession stand here for any fans that get hungry while they’re here. We will have food and drink available.”
“We’ll be running both gyms – the high school gym and the elementary gym,” Coach Gray said of the many games to be played in the two day shootout. We’ll have games going in both. The shootout this weekend will have JV (junior varsity) and varsity.”
Coach Gray took time to talk about the Lady Patriots summer basketball program, a program that has had a long run of success.
“We are off to a great start this summer,” said Gray. “To this point we have 18 games in. Last week, Monday through Wednesday we were at team camp at Cedarville (University) and played extremely well there.
Prior to that we played at a shootout at the University of Dayton where we played four games against some good local Division I competition. June 8th we were at Northern Kentucky for a shootout and we played against some really good competition. We played the defending state champs from Kentucky who has a girl committed to Oregon. We had a good showing there as well, so for the start of the summer it has been very good for us.
We play summer league at Fort Loramie. This week we played Fort Loramie and next week we have Minster – obviously the defending two time state champs so another tough test for us. We’re trying to find the best competition we can play throughout the summer, challenge our kids and give us a gage of where we’re at right now and what we need to work on to be where we need to be for next season.”
OHSAA guidelines limit high school coaches to 10 games coaching from the bench from June 1 through July 31, a rule Coach Gray views as a positive from a coaching perspective.
“I like, the games that I am not coaching,” Gray stated. “I get to see – the kids will obviously still be running the stuff that we want them to run and they will be doing those things, but you get a chance to see the kids calling the plays and what they feel really confident with.
It gives you a perspective of what do the kids really believe in, what defense do they really believe in, what sets do they believe in or what are they least most comfortable with because obviously that will be the kind of things they go to most.
When I’m not on the bench and when I’m watching, I get to have a gage of that and see where they’re really comfortable. Obviously, if they’re not calling some of the things that we’ve put in, then either they are not very confident in that or they just don’t feel comfortable enough to running it right now – they still need more practice time with it, so it allows me to have a different perspective when I’m sitting in the stands watching. It gives you a different type of evaluation.
When you’re on the bench and you’re coaching, you’re really thinking about a lot of different things but when I’m just sitting there in the stands, I get a chance to really evaluate our kids and I like that.
By the end of June we will have played a little over 30 games so the kids will coach themselves in many games or a parent will be coaching them and it gives me an opportunity to sit and watch – we like that.”
