Last season was a stressful one for Beckley girls basketball coach Brian Nabors.
Key players Abby Dillon and Mya Wooton elected not to play and that, combined with losses to graduation, proved to be a major setback for the Flying Eagles.
The good news? The core of the 2023 team that made the state tournament is back.
Dillon, a two-year starter at guard, is back as is Wooton who was a key player off the bench as a sophomore. The duo will join Josie Cross and Donya Burton, a pair of players who braved last year’s storm. It should provide a much brighter outlook.
“Practice has been pretty good and competitive,” Nabors said. “We’ve got a few nagging injuries taking place. Josie Cross with a foot and Donya Burton’s shoulder has been bothering her. Hopefully you we get them back before we play our first game but the expectation is we wanna go out and compete and just be the best that we can possibly be. Let’s play up to our capabilities and let the chips fall. You always have high expectations to succeed when you play at the highest level and that’ll never change. But you know it’s just about us competing and just giving ourselves a chance to be successful.”
Despite last year’s absence of Dillon, Wooton and Mia Seiter, Nabors hasn’t noticed any turmoil. If anything he’s noticed his team grow.
“Honestly, it’s gone well,” Nabors said. “With having a young team, it seems like we’re always young, but having a young team last year in regards to not having a JV team meant a lot of our players that didn’t have experience who needed to play JV, we had to play them on varsity. They have some experience coming back into this year and adding the players that didn’t play last year has really been a smooth transition because the leadership.
“Josie’s been a fantastic leader. She’s really come out of her shell. I think that started last year where she had to do everything. She had to be pretty much do it all last year and then with Abby Dillon coming back, you know she’s always been a leader. She’s a fearless competitor and probably, I would say the best setter in volleyball setter in the state. She’s had an amazing career and made the state tournament every year and her work ethic has helped the young kids so it’s been a really smooth process.”
The Flying Eagles will be tested throughout the season with another challenging schedule. The usual Region 3 matchups are there as well as two with Class AAA title contender Wayne. Add in Spring Valley and University and there are enough measuring sticks to gauge progress throughout the season.
“We wanna play a competitive schedule every year,” Nabors said. “We feel like that just gets us ready for the postseason. We wanna play the best teams out there that we can and we just want to see where we where we lineup with some of the best teams in state and again it just gets us ready for the postseason. We just wanna be competitive and play competitive teams and that just helps us get better throughout the year and prepare for the for the postseason.”
If there was a positive to last year, it’s that so many young players gained experience that will benefit them this year. Nabors believes it’ll contribute to the team’s greatest strength.
“I think we could go pretty deep this year,” Nabors said. “We could go anywhere from 9 to 10 deep and we have some length. It’s a little different than last year. Our perimeter wasn’t long but our front line was long, but our perimeter is long as well this year. Donya Burton and a freshman Zoey Williams about 6-foot-1 and we’re playing them on the perimeter. Of course you got Josie on the perimeter as well. Everybody will be able to guard each position that’s the goal so we could be deep and better guard at every position.”
