Gruver girls’ 2nd state title

Perfect Gruver goes 33-0

Lady Hounds lock up second state title

By DAVE WOHLFARTH

The team had a racker, two locks, a rabbit and a dragon. The players’ favorite game was Fish Bowl, and an honorary director of basketball operations presided at all games.

The team was the Gruver Lady Hounds, who won the 2022 Class 2A state championship with a perfect 33-0 season. Gruver and Class 5A girls champ Cedar Park were the only Texas teams – boys or girls – to go undefeated last season.

When the Lady Hounds were racing down the court in transition, each player had a responsibility. The racker’s job was to get the ball and push it up the floor. The locks, or wing players, sprinted deep to the corners. The rabbit was the rim runner obviously near the basket, and the dragon was the inbounder.

Fish Bowl was the fun game they often played at Coach Trent Lankford’s house. It’s a guessing game with an element of charades but more involved. It produced some high comedy and solid bonding for the team.

Scotty Hintergardt, a Gruver resident in his 60s, was designated by Lankford as his director of basketball operations. The Lady Hounds’ No. 1 fan traveled with the team.

The team left for state accompanied by horse riders and a drone and returned to 125 honking cars lining the streets of Gruver.

The team had a star, too. Bailey Maupin, a 5-10 senior who could play any position, averaged 22 points, 7.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists. A cover girl on this magazine’s past three editions, she earned the girls player of the year award from the Amarillo Globe-News and Press Pass Sports. Dave Campbell’s Texas Basketball named her Miss Texas Basketball, and she was the Class 2A state tournament MVP.

She played in 124 winning games in her four-year Gruver career and scored 2,707 points. She’s now shooting her baskets for the Texas Tech Lady Raiders.

“Bailey’s always been one of those kids that has a really good aura about her,” Lankford said. “She’s never lacked confidence. And her confidence comes from the work she puts in. I know at Tech, she’s just going to blossom.”

But Maupin was far from the whole show at Gruver. Maupin and two other Lady Hounds – Camryn Armes and Brenna Butler – had started for the 2020 Gruver team that captured the school’s first girls state championship. Callie Conyers and Kami Whitehead were bench players on that team. So Gruver had lots of experience but also a new coach ... well, kinda.

Lankford had coached the Lady Hounds for four years, including a run to the state finals in 2015, his final year. He moved over to Amarillo High as an assistant for five years, then back to Gruver when Shannon Fisher took the Coach Trent Lankford

Bailey Maupin moves toward the basket in Gruver’s 69-29 win over San Saba in the Class 2A state semifinals March 4 in San Antonio. (Photo by Annie Rice/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal)

girls job at Childress.

Girls overcome injuries, close calls

The Lady Hounds had to overcome some serious injuries and some close calls to achieve what Lankford called a surreal season.

First off, Lankford’s daughter, freshman Hannon Lankford, tore her ACL in the team’s second scrimmage and was out for the season. She became an energetic and enthusiastic cheerleader on the bench.

Kami Whitehead, a 5-10 senior guard who had started the past two seasons, had double bunion surgery, requiring operations on both feet. She was in a lot of pain as the season began.

“There were tears pretty much in practice because somebody stepped on her foot, you know, just running up and down,” Coach Lankford said.

Whitehead had her feet taped every day to relieve the pressure caused by her big toes. Nevertheless, she kept fighting to get back on the court. And she did.

“She never broke into the starting lineup, but she never whined, she never complained,” Lankford said. “She never made it about herself at any point. And she just played her role as best she could.”

Kimber Whitehead, a 5-8 junior guard, took her sister’s spot spot in the starting lineup. Kimber Whitehead contributed 7.2 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 2 apg while Kami Whitehead supplied some key moments coming off the bench.

Camryn Armes’ injury was even more serious. As a sophomore, she was diagnosed with hip dysplasia during the regional tournament. She kept playing as the Lady Hounds won state.

She was supposed to undergo hip surgery that April, but COVID-19 postponed it until August. She missed basically all of her junior year, playing in only the last five games.

It was a long road back through rehabilitation.

“I was in a wheelchair for about two months. Then I was on

crutches for like six weeks, using a walker at home,” Armes said. “And then just slowly getting back to walking again.”

It hurt when she ran. She tried different things, like stretches, and different shoes. Finally in the sixth game of the season, a 63-47 win over Nazareth, she tried a new pair of shoes.

“That was the best I’ve ever felt,” she said. “At halftime, we came in and it’s like, it’s the shoes. And that’s basically one of my sayings all year.”

Lankford pointed out that Armes also had compartment syndrome surgery on her calves. So she had two major surgeries and overcame those, finishing her season with 12.6 ppg, 3.2 rpg, and 2.2 apg.

In June, Armes was awarded the Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame’s Dee Henry Award for battling back from serious injuries. Armes is playing collegiately at Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City. The struggles she and Kami Whitehead endured didn’t go unnoticed.

“Those two kids fought through some major adversity to be a part of this team and help the team achieve what we achieved,” Lankford said. “I was just in awe daily in the fight and the grit that they showed.”

Rebounder and “glue girl”

Joining Maupin, Kimber Whitehead and Armes in the Lady Hounds’ starting lineup were 5-9 senior guard Callie Conyers and 5-6 point guard Brenna Butler.

Conyers (9.5 ppg, 4 rpg, 2.3 apg) had been working on rebounding the entire year and grabbed 10 rebounds in the state championship game.

“Coach Lankford told me at the beginning of the season that he was going to teach me how to rebound,” Conyers said. “I remember that. But I did get a lot better at it as it went on, and it became one of my strengths.”

Conyers is the sister of Jalin Conyers, the former West Texas High and Gruver star who now is playing football at the University of Oklahoma. Their mother is Kimberly Conyers, the Gruver principal. Callie Conyers, the class valedictorian, will attend Oklahoma State on the academic McKnight Scholarship.

Lankford often calls Butler (10.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 3.8 apg) the

Some of the 14 riders who escorted the Gruver Lady Hounds’ bus in March 2022 on the way out of town toward the state basketball tournament carry American, Texas and Gruver flags. A convoy of vehicles also followed the bus in the send-off. The Lady Hounds rewarded their fans with a second Class 2A state title in three years. (Photo courtesy of Gruver.net)

“glue girl” of the team. “She just did whatever it took to win,” he said. “Whether it be making the extra pass, getting a bucket when we needed one sometimes, to rebounding, to playing defense, to sticking her nose in there on a loose ball.” The Lady Hounds’ top subs were Allie Sparks, Maizie Kelp and Kami Whitehead. A ninth player, sophomore Jaylee Lane, was called up from the JV team late. The perfect season had its share of close encounters. In nondistrict games, the Lady Hounds defeated reigning state champions Brownfield (Class 3A) and Canyon (4A). They also trimmed higher classification teams such as Palo Duro, Idalou, Tascosa, Wichita Falls Rider, Perryton, Hereford and Canadian. Perennial 1A power Nazareth was a victim, too. After a 56-50 win over Idalou in the second game of the season, Lankford told his team 50 points were too many to yield. “Nobody scored over 49 points on us the rest of the way,” he said. The Lady Hounds averaged 66 points on offense and gave up an average of only 35 on defense.

Tough competition

Gruver endured a rough stretch early in the season with games against Nazareth (on Tuesday), Brownfield (Thursday) Lubbock’s Trinity Christian (Friday) and Canyon (Saturday). And they had to play all four without point guard, er, racker, Butler, who was out with a rolled ankle. Maupin took over as racker, and she racked up 35 points and grabbed 16 rebounds in the 63-47 conquest of Naz. At the end of the week, Maupin swished a 3-pointer in the final seconds to force overtime against Canyon. Gruver beat the Lady Eagles 49-44 in double overtime. “We really came together then,” Maupin said of that week. Later the Lady Hounds rolled Canadian 57-32 in the finals of the Gruver Holiday Classic. Both teams entered the game undefeated. Gruver was ranked No. 1 in Class 2A, Canadian No. 1 in 3A. Gruver raced through its eight District 2-2A games without

Bailey Maupin Camryn Armes Callie Conyers

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so much as a sneeze. Victories such as 88-14, 91-9 and 84-5 were logged.

With an open date in the district schedule, Lankford scheduled a game at Liberal, Kansas, to get his team some competition. The Lady Hounds were down one point with three minutes to go but ended up winning by 10, 55-45.

“That was a game we needed,” Lankford said. “We needed to face that, kind of a slap in the face. Like, this is going to get tougher as we near the playoffs.”

After rolling past Memphis and Olton in the first two playoff rounds, the Lady Hounds faced a challenge from Panhandle, the team that had eliminated them the previous season, in the regional quarterfinals. No sweat; Gruver won 50-32.

Gruver did do some sweating in the regional semifinals, however, as it needed an overtime to beat New Home 47-44. The Lady Hounds had handed New Home a 60-49 loss early in the season.

“We kind of staggered around, and we didn’t do a good job in that game of controlling the basketball,” Lankford said. “But to win a state title, or go undefeated, you’re going to have to go through some hard times.”

That was the last hard time for the Lady Hounds. They cruised past Wellington 44-28 in the regional finals.

Then, with Gruverites filling two sections of San Antonio’s Alamodome to cheer them on, Gruver crushed San Saba 69-29 in the state semifinals and Stamford 50-38 in the state finals.

Maupin, Armes and Conyers didn’t envision an unbeaten season when the 2021-22 campaign began. Neither did their coach.

“Absolutely not,” Lankford said, “not with the schedule we had in place.”

When the Lady Hounds left Gruver for San Antonio, they departed the town of 1,100 people accompanied by a slew of horses with flag-bearing riders riding along the fences and fields next to the bus. And a drone flew overhead.

After winning their school’s second state championship in three years, they were greeted by a police escort that picked them up in south Borger and led them to outside of Gruver. Then the victory parade was passed off to the Hansford County sheriff’s department. When they were driving down Gruver’s Main Street, they were greeted by 125 cars (by actual count) honking their horns. People were videoing and cheering.

The Lady Hounds had just racked up a piece of history.

The Gruver Greyhound (Photo by Cathy Martindale)

See a team photo of the 2021-22 Gruver Lady Hounds in the front color section.