WILSON EXTRA : The final chapter for 7 seniors

RICHMOND

What’s a coach to do when the bright lights of the big city blind your team? Not much.

So with her team, scratch that, with her girls struggling with the emotional baggage of wanting a state title so bad, all Wilson coach Kim Claytor could do was call her Green Hornets together and say a few simple words – she told them to calm down.

“That’s about all you can do at that point,” she said.

In the end it wasn’t enough and no matter if it was the cavernous Siegel Center that spelled doom for the Green Hornets’ dream season, or the Howitzer arm of Strasburg hitter Jenna Smoot, nobody took it harder than Claytor.

Kala Guy kept it perspective, smiling, saying it was fun then turning to walk of the arena with her older sister, Candice, in tow.

Christine Coffield, the always smiling senior, kept her pearly whites flashing.

Tiffany Crosby showed no emotion, staring blankly ahead.

And as she talked about the problems that plagued her team Friday night, Kim Claytor was the same old Kim Claytor.

She didn’t make excuses.

“We didn’t play our game,” she said. “We made mistakes.”

She said her team had every chance to win.

“They were trying to do too much,” she said. “They wanted it so bad.”

The only thing missing was NASCAR on the TV and a yellow card or two to hand out and she would have felt right at home in Fishersville.

But then came the reality as the news conference began to wind down.

That’s when it hit her again.

A team full of girls that she says feels like her own daughters is being broken apart by the evilest of high school sport evils – graduation.

So, go ahead, talk about it, coach.

“It’s going to be tough,” she said, her voice starting to break. “I can’t talk about it without crying. I cried at my last practice yesterday.”

She quickly regained her composure after a brief spurt of tears.

“We represented our area very well,” she said. “I’m just proud of them.”

She quickly glanced to her right at Crosby, then back to her left at Coffield and Noël Bartley.

“Can’t nobody ever say we didn’t deserve to be here,” she said.