Senior Night at Fannin County High means looking forward for Lady Rebels
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nior nights have become a rite of passage during high school sporting events. The festivities have grown to be filled with fond farewells and memories of the past.
Not so for the Fannin County Lady Rebels basketball teams, especially the last two. Not a time to look back, but a time to look ahead. This view started last year and is in full glory this season.
Head Coach Ryan Chastain gives much of the credit for this positive outlook to last year’s and this year’s group of senior players – both special in their own ways.
The outlook began in the summer some four years ago after Chastain was hired in May. Soon afterwards, he was invited to watch a travel ball game.
It was that game that featured last year’s six seniors: Paige Foresman, Natalie Thomas, Prisila Bautista, Olivia Sisson, Abby Ledford, and Mackenzie Johnson; and this year’s three seniors, Becca Ledford, Jenna Young and Reagan York.
“I knew we had a pretty good group,” he said of those nine.
As freshmen and sophomores, those classes saw only seven wins their first season, but missed a playoff chance by a three-pointer.
The summer after that season, in a team gathering outside his office just off the high school basketball court, Chastain remembers how the girls started pointing at the title banners hanging high above the playing surface and told him, “We want to do that.”
Then came the next year and they won 17 games and made it to the Sweet 16 at the AAA level.
Jump forward to last year’s senior night, and that class was looking ahead. Not behind. The Lady Rebels would go on to win 23 games, host the Sweet 16 and Final 4 – a steal and a layup catapulting them into the state championship.
After a heartbreaking loss in Macon, leaving them with a second place finish in all of Georgia, it was this year’s trio of seniors who were the first ones after the game to “come to me and say ‘that’s not good enough,’” Chastain said.
“They’re the ‘take no prisoners kids,’” he said of Ledford, York and Young.
“They bought into me (from the beginning)...they’ve been all about the mission.”
That mission is a culture of hard work, dedication and determination. It starts with 6 a.m. workouts and doesn’t end with regular practices.
For instance, last Thursday, January 6, when school let out early due to weather, the after-school practice had to be canceled. But Chastain had no doubt several of the girls would have headed straight for the rec center to practice on their own. This year’s seniors are “the backbone of that culture,” he said.
Every member of the Lady Rebels was looking forward at senior night. It’s the culture.
Sometime this summer, Chastain will likely take a minute to look back, the same as he did last week when talking about last year’s class.
After all, Ledford, York and Young have been with Chastain on his varsity squad since he came to Fannin County High. That’s a memory, but only when the culture says it’s time to remember.