Those watching Shady Spring this season may not recognize many of the faces they’ll see on the sideline or the court.
After graduating seven seniors including 1,000-point scorer Kierra Richmond, Brandon Bennett elected to step down as the head coach to spend more time with his family.
The school didn’t have to look far for his replacement, tapping Tabitha Barnes, the former middle school coach, to fill his shoes. Barnes, who has two daughters on the team, comes in excited for the opportunity with a championship pedigree of her own. She played for and coached with one of the most successful coaches in the state at a previous stop.
“I’ve actually been coaching for over 20 years,” Barnes said. “I played for Hinton and I coached at Summers County with coach Wayne Ryan for a few years and I work at Shady Middle School so I’ve been coaching the team there. All these girls are my girls that I’ve coached previously.”
Ryan won six state championships as the head coach at Summers County and instilled his philosophies in Barnes who hopes to pass them along and build Shady’s program.
“My biggest thing is the love for the game,” Barnes said. “I try to instill that love in the girls and to be aggressive offensively and defensively. Defense is my thing and was at Hinton. Defense creates offense and that’s where we’re heading this year.”
Barnes knows the task of replacing a senior class that helped the program to back-to-back regional berths is an impossible one so she plans to take a different route in helping the program replicate that success.
“You don’t replace Kierra,” Barnes laughed. “You don’t replace players like that so you have to change things up. You play more of a team game this year. I’m hoping to get everybody scoring which is why I said we need to be more aggressive. They all need to want to score. We’re not looking to just pass the ball. It’s going to be a team sport so we’ll need to be all in.”
Getting the group accustomed to this new era isn’t going to be an easy task and one Barnes admits will take her out of her comfort zone.
“We’re going to be fast,” Barnes said. “We’ve got a couple of transfers – one from Midland Trail and one from Woodrow so we’ve got a lot of size that I’m not used to having. But we have a lot of new pieces. Shady had seven seniors last year so we have two returning starters and all these kids coming in from the middle school so it’s going to be a new program. It’s going to take us awhile to get our feet on the ground.”
Amongst the returning players are Barnes’ own daughters and a key sophomore in Kendra Pizzino who will take over as the point guard.
“Both of my daughters played last year,” Barnes said. “Kylee and Austyn. Kylee is tenacious on defense and sees the floor really well. She can shoot and can pass and she’s going to have to step up this year. (Kendra) Pizzino is back and she’ll probably be starting as the point guard. Dang that girl can shoot with a beautiful shot and she’s been handling the ball really well.”
While in a rebuilding period, the Tigers are hoping to streamline it by proximity. The section is wide open with PikeView having graduated a pair of all-staters and Westside having struggled the last two seasons. That’s not lost on Barnes who sees the opportunity to instill confidence in her squad if they can climb the hill first.
“My girls recognize that and who they’re watching for,” Barnes said. “We’re starting new and they’re starting new. It’s ours to take if we want it, they just have to work together to take it. They’re capable of getting the job done, we just have to find the right mix.”
That leads directly to the goal for this Shady squad. They’re not shooting for the stars yet but hoping to position for an eventual run.
“Would definitely love to win the sectional,” Barnes said. “A winning season would be good for us. We’ll be young and don’t have that experience. It might start off rough but we’ll learn as we go and winning that sectional would help our confidence.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
