Tue. Nov 12th, 2024

Girls high school basketball team wins first games in 5 years, turns program around

By Griffin DeMarrais

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – The girls basketball team at Kingsbury High School went 1800 days without winning a game, until this season when they broke the streak.

The losing streak was headlined with a 110-2 loss in 2020. When now head coach Quintin Jones saw that he said he wanted to get involved.

“It was a sense of we want to take a deep reality check and deep look at ourselves and what can we do to fix this issue,” Jones said.

Jones is also the athletic director and said for those years it was tough to get girls interested in playing basketball because of the state of the program.

“There has been a lot of quitting, and long games, long seasons for the last 5 years and a lot of inconsistency with the coaches,” Jones said.

He took over just one week before the 2023-2024 season started and in game one the lady falcons ended the dreaded streak.

“Oh, it was a good celebration and it made everybody feel good and have faith in Kingsbury,” Senior Zakoria Northington said. “We never had great communication and we have now finally changed that.”

Northington has been on the team for 3 years and said she wanted to stick it out and not give up because she loves the game.

“I really never wanted to quit, I wanted to try and figure it out even with all of the losing,” Northington said.

Kingsbury has already had 6 wins this season and are just one away from the most in 20 years. Coach Jones said there is a new attitude on the team that has the girls buying in.

“You make a mistake its fine, you lose a game that is fine, but we just have to keep trying to get better every day,” Jones said.

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