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Don Shields at Villa Madonna

PaNDA - you are our hero!!! Thank you SO MUCH for all of your pictures, positive comments plus everything you and your family have done for girls basketball in NKY over the years.

No - the Villa # quoted above includes elementary school. Villa 's entire HS (boys and girls) is only 195. Less than 100 girls in the entire HS. Villa is very small. As far as scheduling - remember they are required to play everyone in their conference twice. There are only 46 boys and girls in the entire senior class this year.

Ludlow made a good attempt to stop Villa's top players but Morgan Cook came up big with 17 points and the experienced players kept their cool and just played though all of the shenanigans for the win tonight. Making Regionals (and doing it as the #1 seeded team) is a huge accomplishment for Villa's very small and academically focused school. Great job Blue Lightning!!!!

Chelsea is a great teammate and a great girl! Congratulations, Chelsea!!!!!

Yes, the 34th is a seeded district and the winner of the St. Henry/Villa game will be the number 1 seed. The loser will automatically earn the 2 seed

Thanks so much for the beautiful pics of Villa's Senior night but most of all thank you so much for your ongoing positive support of NKY girls basketball. Your attention to the sport with your pictures and your observations about the girls' accomplishments really means a lot to the players and their parents.

VMA's tough, skilled, and excellent Center scored her 1,000th point tonight in VMA's 59-42 victory over District rival, Dixie. Congratulations, Amy - I think you deserve a new puppy now!

I don't know the exact score but I heard it was pretty lopsided - something like Campbell County 70 - 17.

I don't think they are allowed to require it under KHSAA rules. I understand that the "spirit" of the rules is that no HS coach is allowed to "coerce" a student to play a sport year round - that is why a high school coach may not coach one of their high school players on a non school team and why the HS coach can only conduct practices at certain times during the off season.

AAU can take a lot of forms. We put together a "low key" AAU team for our daughter and some of her friends from various small schools so that they could develop better skills that would then benefit their small schools and make them more competitive with the large schools that have the deep benches and tons of athletic girls. The girls on our AAU team all are multi sport athletes so we have to squeeze it in between everything else. Luckily their AAU coach emphasized fundamentals and skills and bringing those to a high school team has really helped their respective schools. Granted, they did not play at an AAU level that will get them DI offers but their AAU experience has been really fun for them (trips to Disney, etc.) and has allowed them contribute a lot to their HS teams. I think its great if you have a coach who cares about the girls and if its done for the right reasons.

It seems as though if there are two qualified and interested coaches then there should be a way for them to work together to make a big impact on the program. I think a really good solution would be for Coach Smith to create a great elementary/middle school program that will feed into the HS program. Then she could also be assistant HS coach and right there when the time came for Coach Kues to retire. Or am I naive to believe that people are capable of working cooperatively together ?

There are lots of tournaments going on at Sports Plus in Evendale (Cincinnati) through an organization called Midwest Hoops. Also Girls Basketball Association has a whole schedule from now through June. Some are in the Cincinnati/Dayton area. Kentucky BCI has some tournaments at SOAS in Florence but they often don't get a lot of the older teams. There are also tournaments run out of the KBA in Lexington and there is a new facility there hosting tournaments as well. I will probably be able to think of more and will also post those. Would like to see more participation by older teams - we have a team too and are finding that the tournaments get more sparse the older the age group.

Congratulations, Casey. This is very impressive especially considering the caliber of players on these teams!!!

It is not Ludlow's (or any DIII school's) fault that they play a weak schedule. All of these schools are required to play 2 games against each conference team. When Calvary chose not to field a Varsity team many of you criticized them for doing so. However, it was a real benefit to the stronger DIII teams to be able to replace those games with stronger competition and I think they took advantage of that opportunity. Ludlow graduates about 4-5 significant players this year. It will probably take a bit for them to rebuild but I can't imagine Stamm not fielding a pretty competitive team.

Defense wins the game for Villa, as they hold Scott to just 8 points in the second half. They also hold Tibbs to just 13. Great win for the Lightning!

It can be a good experience if everyone works together and handles it correctly. In our small school, four 8th graders were asked to play on the HS team but they also wanted to play with the rest of their 8th grade teammates on their 8th grade team. They were permitted to do both and the coaches worked together to minimize their conflicts. It worked out great - the 8th grade team had a super season, won lots of big tournaments and left grade school with great memories. At the same time they got to play on the high school team and got valuable JV experience and even some Varsity minutes. If they had not been permitted to play on the HS team, the HS could not have fielded a JV team that year which would have left several of the high school players not ready for Varsity without a place to get experience. All but one stayed with the same school for high school and the one who left would have stayed except she had to move several States away because of parents work. It was hard work for the girls to go to all of those games and practices and hard for the parents to get them everywhere but there were no complaints and the girls loved it. It worked out because everyone involved (coaches, players and parents) were very decent people, cooperated fully with each other, and put team and school first. They were also able to plan and organize things which is essential. Anyway, I believe that girls should have the experience of enjoying their grade school team and playing against same age girls. But if they are good enough to contribute at the high school level and if they are needed, there is nothing wrong at all with playing up. In the small schools, this is often essential for the team to be competitive with the larger schools. Unless KY is willing to classify basketball, it would be really, really unfair not to allow schools to bring up middle school players.

I think it is a good thing that a team that thinks it cannot be competitive, does not play Varsity and instead plays at an appropriate level. It is not good for anyone concerned to play an entire season and be beaten by 30+ points per game. Plus, it prevents the more competitive DIII teams from getting the competition they need during the season to be ready for districts. In DIII, all teams have to play the other conference teams twice so the better teams are forced to play several weak teams twice. This hurts them when they have to play DI schools in the district tourney. I admire Calvary for making that decision and I don't think they should be penalized for doing so.