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Fans get peek at 'Hound hoops
Fort Scott Community College's men's and women's basketball programs tried a new idea at Arnold Arena Tuesday night. The programs held a HoopFest, which was an opportunity for FSCC students and Greyhound sports fans to see their teams in action before they begin regular-season play next week.
"We have a new men's staff and we thought it was something we could do get the community involved," FSCC women's head coach Stasha Richards said. "There's a buzz going on. We just thought it would be a good idea to give everybody a preview of our team and the men's team as well."
The night began with a "two-ball" contest where a man and a woman were put together into teams, taking alternate shots to score as many points as they could. Sophomores Leondra Doomes-Stephens and Conrad Brown won that contest.
Next was a women's scrimmage. They worked for about 25 minutes, taking a break in the middle to have a contest for kids along with some of the players. The Black team won the scrimmage by six points.
The women seemed excited to be out on the court playing in front of some fans instead of an empty gym.
"We've been going since school started with conditioning and weightlifting," Richards said. "We've had a couple of scrimmages. For the most part, the girls are excited and ready to play. Everybody's excited and ready to go and we're looking forward to kicking things off Wednesday at home."
Following the women's scrimmage, the men and women had three-point contests. Caleb Tolliver won the men's contest while Uniontown High School graduate Kylie Shepard won the women's contest. Then those two were pair off in another round which Shepard won, 10-8.
That was followed by a slam-dunk contest, won easily by Darrell Blandon, a freshman from Euclid, Ohio. On his first dunk, he jumped over three men in a line and brought down the house. He then topped that on his second dunk by leaping over four men for the slam.
The FSCC dance team performed. Then the men had two scrimmages of about 20 minutes each, mixing up the teams a bit before the second scrimmage.
Interim men's head coach Michael Cook, who took over the program in late August, said that his men were also looking forward to working out in front of a crowd.
"I think they enjoyed working out in front of a crowd rather than listening to me get on them," Cook said. "And it was good for them to do that. We're working on winning the way championship teams win and that's playing five-on-five. We can't win playing one-on-one; it's got to be five-on-five."
Both teams will be relying heavily on freshmen. The men have only three returning -- Brown, Brandon Dougherty and Keenan Curry. The women have two sophomores back in Doomes-Stephens and Fatima Lawrence. Shepard is also a sophomore, transferring in after playing at Hutchinson last season.
Fort Scott's men will open the season Monday night with a 7 o'clock tipoff against the MidAmerica Nazarene University junior varsity at Olathe. Due to some schedule changes, the Greyhounds will not play at home until January 3 against Coffevyille.
Fort Scott's women open their season at 6 p.m. Wednesday night against the Ottawa University JV. This is just one of two home games for the Greyhounds prior to conference play. The other will be December 3 against Northern Oklahoma-Tonkawa. After that, they won't be home again until they host Coffeyville in the first game of Jayhawk Conference-Eastern Division doubleheader with the men on January 3.
The women don't have any more inter-school scrimmages planned while the men are scheduled to take part in one at Missouri Southern Thursday evening. NJCAA regulations prohibit much information from being released concerning those scrimmages.