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Lady Ballers earn a national bid
LadyBallers
The Fort Stewart Lady Ballers competed in Albany last weekend and won a bid to the national tournament. - photo by Photo provided by Evelyn Alston

The Fort Stewart Lady Ballers earned a bid last weekend to the 12U/7 grade national tournament. The team traveled to Albany on Friday for the Super Regional Basketball Tournament and beat their first opponents, the Georgia Jaguars from Columbus, by 15 points.

They kept the momentum going on Saturday morning with a 40-point victory over the Savannah Angels and another 40-point victory over the Albany Hot Shots.

The Lady Ballers went on to the championship game Sunday night where they once again beat the Georgia

Jaguars by 20 points to win and the national bid.

Coach Terrence Alston said he was proud of the effort his girls put forth on the defensive end of the court, especially Brianna Reece who had been slowly recovering from an early-season ankle injury but now is back to full speed.

"With her return to 100 percent, we have a set rotation of guards who can compete with any team in the Southeast," Alston said.

The guard rotation includes Sha’quoia(CoCo) Crockett, Bryonna Graham, Akelia Richardson, Brianna Reece and Asyria Daniels.

"They all bring something different to the team and on any given night, any of them can go for 20 plus points," Alston said.

Coach Laquenten Jones said that the post play was especially strong with the emergence of Antoinette Moore, who had her best tournament to date. Asia Smith from Wilkinson County, Alize Roberts, Brooke Standard and Kimberly Beasley also had good games.

"It was really good to see it all finally come together because we had been depending too much on our guard play, but now that the post players are getting in stride we are going to be extremely tough to beat," Jones said.

The Fort Stewart Lady Ballers will be back on the road May 29-31 for another Super Regional in Atlanta.

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