SATURDAY-SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 27-28, 2021 PAGE 23
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Matt Birchfield Head Coach
2021-2022 Cloudland Lady Highlanders
Lady ‘Landers look to take advantage of size factor BY IVAN SANDERS STAR SPORTS EDITOR ivan.sanders@elizabethton.com
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henever a player steps on the court for Coach Matt Birchfield’s Lady Highlanders, there are high expectations that player will be contributing from the get-go and growing up quickly as the Lady Highlanders have one goal in mind and that is reaching the state championship in Murfreesboro year in and year out. This year will be no different after Birchfield lost six seniors to graduation that brought scoring and a lot of floor time to the program. “We are hoping for another good season,” said Birchfield. “We did lose a big senior class of six seniors but we are going to be led by two good ones in Karah Fields
and Taylor Hicks. “We are hoping for some good play that we got to play last year from sophomore Saharra McKinney and junior Ella Benfield, so we are hoping for good things from them.” Birchfield does have one thing in this year’s squad that he hasn’t been accustomed to and that is girls with some height. That will force the head coach to make some changes in how he runs his offense and defense. “We will have to change a little bit,” Birchfield said. “We are going to have a little bit more size than we normally have and we haven’t been used to that. We have to find a way to score. We lost some scoring from last year having lost several kids. If we can find that, I think we will be okay.” After opening the season at Sullivan East against some very strong competi-
tion, Birchfield is hoping that his team will quickly mature as they will have their hands cut out in the conference and look down the road to the district and regional tournament. “Our ultimate goal is always to win the conference and take one game at a time and get down the road but our league is so good and so well coached,” Birchfield said. “North Greene went to the state tournament with a lot of kids returning, Unaka has everybody returning and really strong, and Hampton has a new coaching staff and I look for them to be really good. “Our conference is going to be really good. Night in and night out, you had better be ready to play and take care of the home court because on the road could be tough in our conference.” Birchfield was asked what the keys to his
team’s success would be in the 2021-2022 season. “I feel like it is scoring and replacing the scoring that we had. We need to find the kids that can score consistently for us after losing our seniors and secondly would be the youth growing up quickly. We need to mature quickly.”
