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The balls are bouncing in gyms again By Tom Haley Staff Writer Nov 26, 2018 0 Facebook Twitter Email Facebook Twitter Email Print Save New season. New rules. New coaches. Players in different uniforms. Monday marked the opening day of formal high school basketball practices throughout Vermont. The new rule about game participation generated some discussion. This season, a player can play all four quarters of the junior varsity game and still have a quarter of eligibility for the varsity contest. “I think it will help some of the smaller schools to have JV teams,” Fair Haven girls coach Kyle Wilson said. The rule could play right into Otter Valley girls coach Kelly Trayah’s hands, as he has a talented freshman class. He believes a couple of them might find themselves sliding up and down between JV and varsity immediately. His Otters only lost two players by graduation and Trayah is optimistic. He spent Monday establishing tempo. “We have a lot of field hockey and soccer players who like to run. We’ll be doing that more this year,” Trayah said. He won’t waste time getting to see the Otters against players in another uniform. Joe Costello’s Springfield Cosmos are at Otter Valley on Saturday for a scrimmage. Some players have swapped uniforms. Last year, Brennon Crossmon was an accurate long range shooter off the bench for Mount St. Joseph. This season, he is at Proctor High School where he figures to give the Phantoms’ perimeter game some more juice. Lyndsey Elms is another who made the short trip from MSJ to Proctor. She had been a main ingredient on MSJ’s state championship teams and now she should boost Proctor’s own chances to snare a title. Proctor’s Maddie Flanders has been playing against the talented Elms the last couple of seasons. She is glad she had traded green for maroon. “I think she will add a lot. I think we will have great chemistry with her here,” Flanders said at Proctor’s first practice. But the Division IV girls crown is MSJ’s until somebody can take it away. The Mounties have won the last four state titles. The MSJ girls have a new coach with G.J. Garrow and the Proctor and Fair Haven girls teams have new coaches who are old coaches. Chris Hughes is back to guide the Phantoms after two years away and Wilson is back at the helm of Fair Haven after one year away. Wilson’s return might be surprising to some because he got into officiating last year and told some people he felt being an official served him better with a new family that includes a very young son. “It was just the passion of coaching,” Wilson said of his return to the bench. “It was a family decision.” Wilson will have one of the more active gyms on Saturday. His Slaters are hosting a five-team scrimmage that will also include Proctor, Mill River, MSJ and Thetford Academy. Teams will play opponents they do not meet during the season so the Slaters will go against Proctor, Thetford and MSJ. West Rutland’s gym was plenty busy on this first day. Ali Serrani, recently hired as a physical therapist in the school district, led both the boys team and girls squad in stretching exercises before each team had its own practice later in the evening. West Rutland girls coach Carl Serrani has two scrimmages in place against Mill River and Middlebury. The 3-point field goal got varying degrees of love Monday depending on which PHS you happened to be at. “I want to shoot a lot of 3s,” Poultney girls coach Todd Hayes told his players in a classroom session just before practice. When Joe Valerio missed a 3-pointer at practice, boys coach Jake Eaton said, “I didn’t love that shot. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t love it. It’s not going to be a 3-point shooting contest this year. We relied on it too much.” Hayes’ Blue Devils will host Whitehall, New York in a scrimmage on Saturday morning. Eaton’s Phantoms travel to Barre that day for a three-way scrimmage with Spaulding and Mill River. The Blue Devil girls graduated Leanna Mason, a 6-foot 1,000-point scorer who also pulled down bushels of rebounds. “Leanna will be missed immensely,” Hayes said. But in the classroom, Hayes reminded his players that this summer in an AAU tournament in Maine without Mason, they rebounded very well. “We will be a lot more athletic than we have been here in a number of years,” Hayes said. His schedule will have a little different look. The Devils will play two games against the Granville (New York) Golden Horde, a nearby team the Blue Devils haven’t played in several years. But Hayes and the Blue Devils must still contend with Elms, just not in the MSJ uniform. “She killed us last year,” Hayes said. Elms will not have to wait long to play against her former teammates. The Phantoms open the season at home against MSJ on Dec. 12. Serrani said he used the first day to “lay down some rules and expectations.” He brings back eight players from last year’s West Rutland varsity team. “It’s not rocket science. We aren’t going to change anything,” Serrani said. “I also like to see who has actually improved a lot from last year,” Serrani said. Trayah saw plenty of improvement in his post player Livia Bernhardt. “She is stronger and more aggressive,” Trayah said. After Saturday’s home scrimmage with Springfield, the Otters have others scheduled against U-32 and Vergennes. “I live and die with the point guard and I have three point guards that I am very confident in,” Hayes told the Devils during their meeting. One place where the gym was dark on Monday was at Green Mountain Union High School in Chester. They cancelled school Monday so the Chieftains had to wait until Tuesday to get started. GMUHS fans have plenty to be excited about in girls basketball where the Chiefs return every player from a team that went 16-4. The Chiefs had good balance with three players averaging between 9.8 and 10.2 points per game. One was Hannah Buffum and coach Terry Farrell feels this could be her year after being slowed by illness last season. GM boasts eight seniors, so as Farrell said, “it’s now or never.” Few coaches lined up as many scrimmages as Farrell did and it begins on Saturday with a three-way scrimmage in Arlington that also includes Mount Anthony. He also has scrimmages set up with Burr and Burton, Springfield and Thetford. “We tried to get some tougher competition,” Farrell said of that scrimmage lineup. The Chieftains open on Dec. 10 at Black River. All these teams are hoping to make it to Exit 7 off Interstate 89, that coveted ribbon of highway that leads to Barre Auditorium, site of the Final Four for teams in Division II, III and IV. The first mile marker was the one in sight on Monday. Or, in the case of Green Mountain, Tuesday. tom.haley
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