SATURDAY-SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27-28, 2021 PAGE 11
WWW.ELIZABETHTON.COM
2021-2022 Hampton Lady Bulldogs
Lady Bulldogs looking to turn defense into offense
BY IVAN SANDERS STAR SPORTS EDITOR ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
T
he Hampton Lady Bulldogs enter the 2021-2022 season with a new head coach on board as after a seven-year stint away from coaching the game, Brandon Carpenter returns to the coaching arena to lead the Lady Bulldogs after Bud Hazelwood retired at the end of last season. Carpenter had coached on the boys side at Cloudland before he took some time off but is excited to be back coaching the Lady Bulldogs. “It felt good when we had that first camp to get back in the groove,” said Carpenter. “I have been real pleased with how the girls have come along. “It’s not a whole lot different. We demand
the same thing out of them as we did the boys. It’s actually went pretty smooth. They have made the transition pretty well honestly.” Hampton struggled offensively in the 2020-2021 campaign and Carpenter believes that if this team buys into what he is selling, their defense will provide several opportunities to score on the offensive end. “We are sticking with the same thing as I did with my boy’s teams,” Carpenter said. “We are doing a lot of pressing and up-tempo offense and the girls seem to have bought into and they have worked real hard on ball handling and being able to play that way. “We have actually been scoring some points but we hang our hat on the defensive end. A lot of times we talk about turning that defense into offense and I feel as we get better at that, we will get better as the year progresses.”
One of the players that Carpenter will be looking to in not only scoring some points this season but also from a leadership role is Madi McClain who returns to the floor this season. “Madi is a coach on the floor and the things that I have wanted to do, she has been such an asset in relaying that to the girls,” he said. “She has been a big deal for us. She is a really good player but an even better leader.” The Watauga Valley Conference is going to be loaded from top to bottom this season and Carpenter is hoping that his team can fit somewhere in the top mix by the end of the season. “The league is really good. We had a play day and played some bigger schools and nobody in our league lost a game so it’s going to be tough,” Carpenter said.
Brandon Carpenter Head Coach
