STATE EXTRA: It’s all about consistency

STAUNTON
Three years ago Jeremy Hartman said he wanted to add consistency to a struggling Robert E. Lee girls basketball team.

  “I think it’s going to take consistency in the coaching ranks first,” Hartman said in early January of 2007. “I think I’m the sixth coach in the last 10 years. And I’m the first in a while to come back in a second year.

“A coach has to be somewhere five years. You have to be somewhere long enough to see the younger group grow up and know you, and that takes about five years.”

Hartman beat his mark by a year.

Tonight the Lee Ladies will take on Graham in the Group AA, Division 3 quarterfinals at James Madison University. The state appearance is Lee’s first since the fall of 2002.

Hartman said Graham will be a challenge for Lee, matching the squad of five freshmen and two sophomores.

“Just looking at them from a numbers standpoint, I think size wise we are bigger than them but I think we a just a little bigger,” Hartman said. “At this point they are all tough. There are eight teams left and they didn’t get here by accident.”

Looking back to their first game of the 2008-2009 season against Broadway, Hartman said the first quarter was shaky.

“I think Kendra [Scott] had two fouls in 45 seconds and Daquaa followed soon after,” he said. “In our first game of the year we had four freshmen and a junior on the floor. But they played well, did what they needed to do and we won.

“I wasn’t nervous, uncertainty would be a good word because you didn’t know what the freshmen would do in varsity … you try to explain to them varsity is different, so I was unsure how they would react but like I said before you can’t call them freshmen anymore. They don’t make freshmen mistakes.”

The team responded for a 64-43 win. The next game against Turner Ashby, Lee wasn’t as lucky, falling 83-43 to Turner Ashby.

“The wake up call came at TA, that’s when we were like, ‘Hey, we aren’t good as we think we are,’ and that was good for us in the long run,” Hartman said.

Lee went on to finish the regular season as Southern Valley champions.

“I think we are at a foundation,” Hartman said. “The foundation is laid but I guess you could say this group is the chief cornerstone, but it is a young group and there is a lot of room to build.”

While Hartman is slow to take any credit from the team’s success, his players say he brought them together and helped coach them to a Region III, Division 3 title after a 13-point come-from-behind victory over Lord Botetourt.

“He helped a lot, a whole lot,” said Daquaa Scott. “He took a program that was known for attitudes and now look where we are.”

Hartman said that the team’s success was because of it’s belief in each other.

“It’s really just an undying belief in each other and their abilities,” he said “I’ve never seen it in a group of young ladies this young. No matter the situation they think they can comeback and win.”