Shady Spring – It would be easy to assume Shady Spring will hoist the Class AAA trophy when it’s all said and done in March. After all, the Tigers return four starters from last year’s state championship team, having only graduated one player.
All four of those aforementioned starters – Jaedan Holstein, Braden and Cole Chapman and Cameron Manns – are only juniors with the Chapman twins already earning first-team all-state status. Factor in that another junior in Sam Jordan started a few games and sophomore Ammar Maxwell was the team’s sixth man as a freshman and the stars are aligning for a special run.
Shady coach Ronnie Olson wants to make such a run the goal, but doesn’t want his squad to believe it’s going to be handed to them.
He’s even using a program from his own school as an example.
The volleyball team at Shady Spring has played for state championships the last three years, winning it all in 2020 but falling short in its other two attempts.
“We have a volleyball team that had a chance to win four in a row here,” Olson said of a program that also features several junior stars. “They were the best team in the state this year and they fell short and a lot of our boys go out and watch them and support them and I think that kind of struck home to them. We hate that that happened to them because we’re really close with that program but I think it kind of helps our guys realize you can’t get complacent, not that the volleyball team did. It just shows you there are teams out there to beat you and to happen close to home, it hit home for us. A lot of the boys were talking about it, so I think it helped them get focused when we started here this week.”
A brief canvas of the current landscape of Class AAA shows the Tigers in perfect position to defend their title. Last year’s power, Robert C. Byrd, graduated most of its team while head coach Bill Bennett retired. Fairmont Senior graduated its best player in Jaelin Johnson and Wheeling Central, who the Tigers beat in the Class AAA state championship, graduated all-stater J.C. Maxwell.
Still that hasn’t deterred Olson and Co. from talking about repeating. They know they’re the heavy favorites coming into the season and have a goal to build something that lasts beyond this season. While Northfork is known as the team of the ’70s and Beckley ,the team of the ’90s, the Tigers want to be known as the team of the 2020s.
“I want to address the elephant in the room,” Olson said. “Being complacent and not talking about it is just hindering the situation. Us bringing it up, I told them every team hates them outside of our community and every team wants to beat you. Our approach this year, from what I’ve seen, I think they’re hungry, if not more hungry. I think being historic in the annals of basketball history in West Virginia is enough for this team. I think doing it back-to-back is special. Winning it the first time is historic itself, but being a team of the decade, I’ve talked to them directly about that.
“Just looking across the locker room in their eyes and the way they’ve practiced this week, I haven’t had to get on them once. I think they’re locked in on what we want to do. I think we’re going to have stumbling blocks along the way but I think this team’s built different. They play for something and you can’t just go play basketball to play it. You’ve got to go out there and play for something.”
The oozing confidence Olson has in his team, as well as his comfort in addressing them directly on the matter, comes from the mental makeup of the group. They took the state by storm as sophomores last season, overcoming an eight-point deficit in the championship game to win by double digits. That was after a half in which their shots weren’t falling against a head coach who has six titles to his name and a team that had won a title itself just three years ago.
Olson rarely has to worry about their drive or motivation, something he believes to be infectous.
“You’re only as good as the company you keep,” Olson said. “I think the company we have here is pretty damn good. Our environment in this locker room is just contagious. They just feed off each other. They’re always up for a game, they’re always up for practice. There might be a small part of practice where I’ve got to get on them but for the most part these guys just love playing together. They love playing the right way and they love wanting to do something special. It’s not just one or two of them – it’s everybody.”
Email: Tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
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