“It’s been great,” said Holweger, who took over for longtime coach Tom Benjamin. “They’re a special group. First and foremost, they’re great people, so they’re a lot of fun to be around. Very reliable, very dedicated to becoming the best that they can become. I was able to see quickly why they’ve had the success that they’ve had.”
As many teams that expect to have strong seasons do, the Panthers created a difficult non-league schedule and planned a trip to the Tampa Invitational in late December. They lost two of the three games, but they got what they wanted from the trip.
“We had a lot of fun, and the weather cooperated towards the end of the trip, so we were able to spend some time in Clearwater,” Holweger said. “It was beneficial in a number of ways even though we dropped two games. We learned a lot, we figured out some things that we needed to certainly improve on, and we feel like we’ve been doing that here the last couple of weeks.”
The Panthers’ leader is 6-foot junior guard Bryn Martin, who has multiple college offers from schools like Dayton, Ohio State and Iowa. She leads the GWOC with 19.3 points a game and is second in assists at 4.7 a game. In Wednesday’s 57-21 victory over Springfield, Martin made two 3-pointers to tie the school career record at 139. She tied Courtney Hillis, who played for the Panthers from 2012-2015.
“Obviously, we ask her to do a lot,” Holweger said. “She deserves everything she’s getting. She’s as hard a worker as I’ve ever coached. The amount of time that she puts in when no one’s watching is incredible.”
Junior post player Aniya Trent, who is 6-2, gives Holweger versatility on defense while averaging 8.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 2.1 blocked shots.
“Defensively we move her all over the place,” Holweger said. “Her versatility allows us to be flexible with our defensive packaging, and she is an absolutely incredible post defender, disrupts a lot of shots, blocks a lot of shots, rebounds it. I still think her greatest strength is her court vision. She’s an incredible passer.”
Holweger also likes the senior leadership of Chloe Downing and Morgan Meek. Both will play Division II basketball next year. Downing is going to Cedarville and Meek to Kentucky Wesleyan. Another key player entering the season was junior forward Carly Turman. She scored 10 points in the first game, but a knee injury in the second game halted her season. Holweger said she is rehabbing and hoping to be back on the floor before the season ends.
Holweger, as new coaches often do, saw one thing he wanted to add to the game plan. He’s been training the team to do more in transition and play faster while at the same reducing turnovers. Last year the Panthers averaged 15.3 turnovers. This year that number is down to 13.0.
“We’ve done a good job with that,” he said. “That was probably the biggest thing that we focused on in the offseason, and then trying to push the pace to get more shot attempts per game. We’ve succeeded in doing that, but we still need to get to the free-throw line a little bit more.”
Miamisburg girls: Senior guard Alley Haas became the latest GWOC player to reach 1,000 points. She did it Wednesday night in a 43-34 loss to Fairmont. Haas scored 15 points and reached the milestone in the final 10 seconds of the game.
Waynesville girls: The Spartans stayed unbeaten with a final-seconds basket Monday for a 48-46 victory over Bellbrook. Senior Emme Greely caught a pass in the high post, turned into the lane and passed to junior Tori See for a layup and the winning basket.
The Spartans (18-0, 9-0 Southwestern Buckeye League) will be seen as favorites in their final four games as they attempt to complete an unbeaten regular season.
Wayne boys track: The Warriors are setting school records and freshman Jamier Averette-Brown is leading the way.
The 4x200-meter relay team of Sean Westmoreland, Key’Shawn Garret, Jackson Solomon and Averette-Brown won the University of Michigan Invitational with a school record time of 1 minute, 28.88 seconds. That’s the No. 1 time for an Ohio team this season and No. 12 nationally.
At the same meet, Averette-Brown set a school in the 60 meters at 6.76 seconds, which is the best time in Ohio, fifth-best nationally and No. 1 nationally among freshmen. The old record of 6.85 was held by Zarik Brown, who runs for Oklahoma and holds the program record in the outdoor 400 meters and was second-team All-American last year in that event.
Centerville Hall of Fame: Former NFL defesnive end Ifeadi Odenigbo is one of four former Elks who will be inducted into the school’s hall of fame Saturday. Odenigbo, a 2012 graduate, played football and was a multi-event indoor state track qualifier. He was an all-Big Ten performer at Northwestern and was a seventh-round draft choice by Minnesota in 2017. He played for five teams through 2022.
Other inductees are two-time state champion swimmer and Purdue academic All-American at Purdue Joshua Brooks (2013); three-time state cross country qualifier four-year letterman at North Carolina Jenniee Sucher DiGiovanna (2000); multiple track and cross country all-state performer and four-time Georgia Tech letterman Shawn Roberts (2009).
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