Lady Eagles competing because of tough leadership

Jackson Christian girls' basketball is blessed with a big senior class this year, and head coach Tony Shutes said all six of them play integral roles for the Lady Eagles.

Two of those seniors - Tess Little and Carley Holt - are two players that he credits for being tough leaders in the locker room and on the court for the team.

"Carley's been through a lot, and that kind of forced her to be tough," Shutes said. "Plus she comes from an athletic family, so that helps too.

"And Tess, she's a guard that knows the game well and plays smart. They both provide good leadership in different ways."

The "a lot" that Holt has been through is a pair of significant injuries that has severely limited how many high school games she's played for Jackson Christian.

"I've torn both of my ACLs at different times and pretty much lost two years of high school basketball," said Holt, who plays forward for the Lady Eagles. "But I would say missing two years of basketball makes my senior year that much more special because I value the playing time I do have, but at the same time I know at any moment it can all be taken away from me because I've already dealt with that."

But Holt said the injuries were good for her in a way. She said when she was younger she took basketball too seriously in her life because it was too important for her.

"It was the most important thing for me," Holt said. "And then all the sudden it's taken away, which makes it a lot less important.

"It gave me time to really think about what is important.

"Being a good person, living for Christ, helping others, working hard in class, working for my future, my family, my friends - all of that should be more important than basketball. And I think once I put basketball in its proper place, then life seemed to work out a little better for me."

Little also comes from athletic family, so playing a tough brand of basketball isn't anything new for her.

But playing Shutes' brand of basketball was something it took both seniors a little while to get used to after he arrived on campus not long before their sophomore year started.

"I've had a lot of coaches who emphasized toughness, but his style of play and coaching," Little said. "He focuses all strategy we do on the inside game first on offense and zone play on defense, and both of those were adjustments for me.

"But he also let us know pretty quickly that he has his way of doing things, and that's going to be our team's way of doing things as long as he's the coach. It took us a few weeks to get used to it, but we did."

Once that happened, there's a trust there from the players for their coach.

"Coach Shutes has been doing this for a long time and he's won a lot of games," Holt said about Shutes, who's a member of this year's class of the Jackson-Madison County Sports Hall of Fame. "And now that we're seniors, I think he trusts us to run his style of play, and it works more times than not."

The Lady Eagles made it through the first half of district play with a record of 4-1, and their next game is Tuesday night at home against the one team that handed them their loss - defending state champion and neighbor University School of Jackson. Tipoff is at 6 p.m.

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news