WHITEHALL — With so many players available that they played the regular season of Whitehall’s summer JV girls basketball league with two different teams, Shelby rolled to the league’s championship in Monday’s single-elimination tournament.
The Tigers dispatched Whitehall, Hart and Ludington, all by double-digit margins, in the tournament. (Games were played in two 20-minute halves with a running clock outside of stoppages inside the final minute of each half.) They played with two different teams - a Purple and a White team - during the league’s regular season to give the league an even 12 teams.
Shelby, Hart and Hesperia all played in the league, as did Whitehall, Montague, Reeths-Puffer, Ludington, North Muskegon, Hart, Hesperia, Fremont, Oakridge and Mona Shores.
Hart defeated Hesperia in the tournament quarterfinals (Hart got a bye while Hesperia beat Fremont in round one) before the Tigers bested the Pirates in the semis. Each team was largely composed of incoming freshmen and sophomores.
Bringing the two groups back together for the tournament was an interesting challenge, said Mark Peterson, who coached the Tiger JVs along with Kevin Burmeister, but a good one.
“It’s a good challenge, because for the first time in a long time in Shelby, we’ve got numbers,” Peterson said. “We had enough to do two teams versus trying to struggle together to get one, so we split up our posts and guards and had both teams equal, which really helped because it put everybody in a position they normally don’t get to (play), and they play a lot of minutes.”
Shelby wasted no time grabbing big leads in each of its tournament games with its aggressive defense - and more impressively, the Tigers maintained those leads even as their opponents tried to claw their way back into the games.
“We lead by defense, and our intensity really gets us up early,” Peterson said. “That allows for more players to get in, but every player on the bench expects the same thing. It’s defensive intensity and then rebounding.”
The Tigers’ continuity - Peterson said players have been running the same system for a few years, since they were in middle school - minimized the difficulty of splitting the team into two squads.
“We’ve been running the same play sets,” Peterson said. “They’ve played with each other, even though we’re combining two grades. For our guards to be able to get more time - in a normal game, maybe they only get five or six minutes, but in this setting, they could get more playing time. It’s just big, because as a younger player, you just need more court time.”
The league also created the opportunity for smaller schools such as Shelby to be exposed to larger-school teams like Ludington and Shores, giving them a look at a wider variety of play styles.
“The more variety of schools that we can play, (the better,) just because everybody plays a different type of defense, different inbounds (plays), and all that does is help with basketball IQ,” Peterson said. “The more things you can see during the summer, the better.”
Having an option close to home to get the Tiger JVs some game action without spending a bundle was a boon to county teams, who don’t always have that many chances to do so.
“Especially for younger teams, JV teams, to have something like this, just because scrimmages are so tough (to find),” Peterson said. “Everybody wants to go to a varsity (event,) but they don’t have usually enough girls to do JV. With Whitehall putting this on, it’s been great the last couple of years. It’s really helped for our team bonding, especially because it’s 15 minutes away so everybody can make it.”
