Westside Scrimmage- Elkins vs Atascocita

                  

    Jasmyn Howard and Kaylan Sanders will have to help take up the slack for now

Elkins was one of my top teams for the preseason, primarily because of Donielle Breaux. Hoopgurlz has her rated as a three star athlete and she has verballed to Kansas of the Big 12, one of the toughest conferences in the country. Without her, Elkins is still a good team, the addition of post Breanna Barnett was huge. While Breaux is nursing minor injuries, Coach Yarber will get a feel on what his team can do without her, however when she gets back, other teams will take notice. 

Coach Jackson keeps the Atascociita kids fresh and on their toes. This team will be there before it's all said and done . Lauren Price comes out after another workaholic performance.

Barnett and Fort Knox

Barnett and Parker are still battling each other in their final high school  season

 Elkins is blessed with speed, quickness and guards who can drain the three. Their press can be a monster for opposing teams at times

Speaking of speed, Sanders is one of the fastest guards in the city

Westside Scrimmage-Westside vs Atascocita

 

Atascocita will have a bulls eye on their backs all season. With the addition of Chrishauna Parker and Rachel Mitchell to go along with a team that advanced to the Elite 8 last season, on paperthey appear to be headed to Austin. Parker will be playing at UTEP next season and knows how it feels to go to Austin, she went with a Brittany Griner led Nimitz team year before last. Mitchell is headed to Aggieland after this season. She is one of the highest ranking posts in the country and although she is hampered by minor injuries, being anywhere from 6'5 to 6'7, she creates some problems on both ends.

Lauren Price will be the X factor once again. She is one of the hardest working players in the city and when you have that never say die attitude, good things happen for your team. I always say you can't teach heart and this young lady definitely has that.

Curtyce Knox is one of the top guards in the country. Her patented spin move is second to none . She's also one of those guards that can hurt you even when she doesn't score. A shooter that loves to play defense, she's a throwback to another era

You have to have three point shooters to open things up!

Rachel Arthur is another long range bomber that will keep the defense on their toes

Sights and Sounds from HBU

HBU!

Tejada has a couple of brothers that were "PLAYERS"

Rae Rae and her trademark rolled up shorts!

Megan Green

Okay, SIGHTS! Seriously, make it a point to catch some college games.

The Next Level and HBU vs Henderson State

I can't stress the importance of younger kids watching older kids play so they can see what it takes to get to the next level. This is something I have preached over and over to parents throughout the years and it saves a lot of time and energy, along with giving a much needed reality check on how good you really have to be. We are in a city with all of these colleges, Rice, U of H, TSU, HBU and San Jac and when you look at the percentage of girl's that actually make it to the next level, well hopefully this is an eye opener
What's The Percentage?

These numbers are from the NCAA and less than 4% is scary, however the Chronicle ran a story on an even more alarming number, less than 1%
More numbers

I think both stats are somewhat misleading, NAIA and JUCO for instance have not been included, so I have my own data and I do know this. At the moment, seventeen kids from our area have verballed that I know about and next week is early signing. I see the number of signees during the early period being in the low twenties, and  a few more will sign during the regular signing period. My scouting and consulting services will help these numbers and percentages significantly in the future.

I plan on looking at more college ball this season, in fact after watching Atascocita, Elkins and Cinco Ranch go at it against Westside and each other, I headed over to Sharp Gymnasium to watch HBU play Henderson State because several area kids were playing. It's great to see how many of these kids have grown up right before my eyes and I continue to watch them as they have acheived their dreams, but if you ask any of them, I am sure they will tell you about all of the hard work they put in.

Here are two examples of what I'm talking about. Princess Jenmard and Raquel Jones both play for HBU, right now both are injured. Raquel will be back in December, Princess is redshirting due to a knee injury. I remember these two young ladies going at it against older kids while they were still in middle school and both had a lot of success in high school. Princess was an offensive machine for Alief Taylor while Jones broke a lot of backs dropping bombs from everywhere at Madison.

Destini Tejada and Megan Green are also from the Houston area. Tejada was hampered by injuries during her high school years at Elsik, however her "WORK ETHIC" which is second to none kept her going. The term "BEAST" is used a bit too frequently with some of these kids and if you ever had a chance to watch this kid, you would know what it really meant. Green, like Jones, was a bomb squader and could shoot the lights out. She helped Clear Lake win a lot of games during her career.

Folks if you don't know the name Tia Jackson, you haven't been around watching these kids play for long. Tia was one of the best players to come out of Crosby High School and one of the top players in the Class of 2006. A transfer from Tulane, Tia was one of the smoothest players to come through here and was what I call a silent assassin.

Although she isn't from Houston, I remember working the Texas A&M camp years ago and all of these kids were screaming in the other gym. I head over and see this young lady a little over 5' going completely OFF. I asked who she was and somebody said, I don't know her real name but they call her "SPOON". Well, this former Waco Midway stars name is Krissica Harper and after parting ways with TSU, she has found a home at Henderson State 

Joycelyn Taylor was a standout at Langham Creek and transferred from Texas A&M Corpus Christi

I can't tell you how this kid kept me laughing over the years. The first time I met her, she was off the chain talking about her game and I was thinking, I wanna see this. Well guess what?" She was "OFF THE CHAIN".Ladies and gentleman, former Cy Springs star, Marsharae Brown, but please, call her "Rae Rae"

If you've never had a chance to see her play, let me sum it up for you. Picture the Energizer Bunny being real! This kid keeps going and going and going, never giving up, never quitting!

As great as it was seeing the kids, I also enjoyed catching up with the moms. Former Westside star Michael Moss plays on the Men's team, his mother is pictured to the right

I want to thank HBU for the hospitality and being a dog lover, hanging out with Mingo was great! I will post some pics later from the exhibition, along with with thoughts from the Westside Scrimmage, part 2.