STATE EXTRA: Morgan ready for another title

RICHMOND
With a second state championship ring soon to be placed on her finger, Buffalo Gap’s Holly Morgan is more than ready to see what happens in the future. Morgan is only a junior and has helped lead the Bison to two back-to-back Group A, Division 1 titles.

Gap loses seven of its players this season including Samantha Long, Courtney Sanderson, Renee Burford, Tess Miller, Madison Benner, Sara Lamneck and Angie Harris. The Bison will only have three seniors on the returning team consisting of Morgan, Casey Parady and Lauren Lacey.

Morgan is ready to put forth the effort that it will take to return to the Big Dance in Richmond next season.

“It’s going to be a lot of pressure and hard work,” said Morgan. “There’s only three seniors next year. We’re losing so many people.”

The Bison also have two sophomores returning to their team next year, Kaye Benner and Hannah Dowdell.

“We will have to put in a lot of work to get the underclassmen to play at the ability that they’ll have to play at,” Morgan said.

When thinking of 2008’s state journey, Morgan was all smiles.

“The whole thing last year was unexpected,” Morgan said. “So it made it that much better.”

There wasn’t a whole lot of difference from last year’s state championship compared to this year’s either.

“The similarities would be that it was the same girls and the same win,” Morgan said.

The thought of losing those same girls, the ones that she’s been with from the beginning, hit Morgan hard.

“We were excited to win, of course, but it was a little bit of sad and happy at the same time,” Morgan said.

But she won’t be put down for too long, with the sight of a third state championship in her eyes, Morgan is ready to push the young Bison forward.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Morgan said. “We’re losing a lot of our posts and the younger girls are really going to have to step it up.”

“Not many people can say that they’ve made it to the state game and won it, maybe, three times in a row.”