Woodruff Middle School Lady Cubs Win Seventh
Conference Championship in Nine Seasons
By: Garrett Mitchell, Staff Writer
When you win as much as the Woodruff Middle School Cubs’ girls’ basketball program, it might be easy to take success a little bit for granted.
However, that is not how head coach Daniel Addis and his teams operate.
With one of the youngest rosters, he has ever fielded, Coach Addis and the Lady Cubs overcame a season filled with uncertainty and setbacks to once again claim the Foothills Conference tournament championship for the seventh time in nine seasons.
With two-star eighth-graders in Jensyn Turner and Rihanna Wallace already staring on the varsity basketball team at Woodruff High, a young cast of up-and-coming players delivered the hardware for Woodruff Middle School this season. It was a season capped on February 10th with a 31-18 victory over Clifdale Middle School, a team that had defeated the Lady Cubs less than two weeks prior during the regular season.
“Growth is the perfect word for this team,” said Coach Addis. “We were very young, inexperienced, and they worked their tails off all season, and you see what happened.”
At times, those growing pains hurt more than others. The Lady Cubs finished 7-5 during the regular season, good for just the fourth seed out of six teams in the tournament. Along the way, they were defeated by Rainbow Lake, Sims, and Clifdale during conference play.
Rainbow Lake, who would be the number one seed in the tournament for the Foothills Conference, would wind up being just another stepping stone along the Lady Cubs’ road to postseason redemption.
Woodruff caught fire in the tournament, dispatching Sims in the first game, followed by a thrilling final moments victory over Rainbow Lake. That set up a rematch against host Clifdale in the championship game.
The Lady Cubs left no doubt, leading wire to wire and by as many as 15 points on their way to another title.
A stifling defense in the championship game led to multiple fast-break layups that helped Woodruff build a double-digit halftime lead that they maintained throughout the rest of the game. Seventh-grader Jaylen Means played her best game of the season, contributing over ten steals and turning many of those into points on the other end of the court.
“We preach defense,” said Addis. “If a team can’t score, then they can’t beat you. That is our main focus, and that led to steals and layups. We were aggressive, and that paid off tonight. Jaylen played great. I don’t know if she’s played that well all season.”
For Means, winning a championship in her first season on the middle school team was a special moment to cap off a wild season.
“I was just very happy to be here playing with my teammates,” she said. “I just really wanted to win for them. It feels really good to win. We had a mindset of revenge. We were going to come here and win and not let them beat us again.”
Another standout player who contributed to the winning effort was the eighth-grader Jordan Robinson. In her final game before moving on to the high school program next season, Robinson contributed mightily to the Lady Cubs’ defensive pressure and herself scored several crucial baskets.
“Winning just makes me want to play harder and practice harder, that way, I can do the same thing next year (at the high school),” Robinson said. “There is a lot of pressure (to win), but that pressure is what keeps me going.”
Counting the tournament, the Woodruff Lady Cubs finished with a 10-5 record. With yet another trophy to add among the many already on display, perhaps Woodruff Middle School may need to invest in another trophy case soon.
Either way, Coach Addis said he is incredibly proud of his teams’ resiliency and what they were able to accomplish.
“This team played together,” Addis added. “We struggled with that at times. After (losing to Clifdale) it was like a completely different team. Them coming together at the end of the season, I’ve never seen a team do what they did and accomplish what they did.”
Author: Tracy Sanders
