For any sports team, it’s tough to focus after a coaching change. This can be especially true of high school sports, when such changes can be coupled with enough player losses to make, essentially, a brand-new team.
This has been Plant City’s challenge in the 2015-16 season, but the team didn’t immediately know what it would be up against. While many probably believed the team was on track for a two-win season at best, coach David O’Callaghan has gotten his girls off to a 4-2 start.
BEATING THE ODDS
It all started in the offseason, when the Lady Raiders lost key player Shayna Lawrence.
Lawrence, a senior, relocated to Georgia with her family before the beginning of the school year. She wasn’t Plant City’s only immediate loss but, as the star forward and top rebounding presence, her contributions to the frontcourt would be sorely missed.
The next big blow happened just as tryouts for the season were beginning, in late October. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, then-coach Wilt Wilkerson called PCHS athletic director Tim Leeseberg to say that he would not be coaching the team this season. A few days later, he withdrew his daughter from school and moved the family to Georgia — near the Lawrences, with whom Wilkerson and his family have long been friends.
Suddenly, Plant City needed to replace five players, its head coach and an assistant. After a brief search, Leeseberg opted to stay in-house and promote O’Callaghan from the junior varsity girls team.
O’Callaghan, 24, is a 2009 PCHS graduate who also suited up for the basketball team while in school.
He earned the promotion after one year of coaching the JV team and was able to maintain many of the same in-game facets that were a part of Wilkerson’s system.
He’s one of the few Raider coaches that is not also a teacher: by day, O’Callaghan is a tax accountant for Lockheed Martin. His wife and mother-in-law both work at PCHS, however.
O’Callaghan had worked with a handful of the players before moving up to the varsity team this year, and relied on them to help make the transition smoother for everyone. His first message to the girls was simple.
“It was really about a week before our first game,” O’Callaghan says. “The first thing I said was, ‘You’ve got to believe in me. I know I’m a young coach, I know you’re a young team, but you’ve got to believe in me.’”
Plant City ended up losing that first game, a 55-44 defeat at the hands of Plant High, but then figured it out. The Lady Raiders ripped off four straight wins, including a 59-13 blowout at Lennard, and appear to have fully bought into the system.
SQUAD GOALS
O’Callaghan isn’t taking this season lightly, even in the face of such heavy losses.
“Our goal is to make it out of the district tournament,” he says.
In a district with a constant force in Strawberry Crest and an up-and-coming Durant squad, that’s no small task. It’s especially difficult when considering how guard-heavy Plant City is — without the size it had last year, winning rebounding battles is difficult.
So the Lady Raiders are taking full advantage of one of the latest trends in the basketball world.
Small-ball is fast becoming a thing in hoops, especially after the Golden State Warriors used it to win an NBA championship and begin this year on an unprecedented win streak.
While many teams do it to mix things up, the Lady Raiders play small ball out of necessity. This means that their game is, for the most part, fast.
O’Callaghan’s up-tempo offense relies on junior Lacey Hargrove and the backcourt to out-maneuver their opponents to set up scoring chances as quickly as possible in the hopes of beating the forwards and centers to the net.
That’s not to say that Plant City doesn’t slow things down when it should, but anyone at a Lady Raiders game should be prepared to follow the ball quickly.
Hargrove currently leads the team with 16.3 points and has 4.7 rebounds, 4.3 assists and 4.3 steals per game. Freshman Constance Thomas has also been a big part of the team’s success, scoring 12.7 points per game, and sophomore Jordin Vance is doing her part around the glass with 9.3 rebounds and one block per game.
Achieving O’Callaghan’s goal will be tough, but it wouldn’t be the first time Plant City has defied the odds this season.
Contact Justin Kline at jkline@plantcityobserver.com.