Photos by Steven Wright | Greene County News
Greeneview junior Eli Walker (14) and sophomore King Tripp (10) look to trap a Greenon ball handler during Tuesday’s 56-42 win at home. The duo are two of the new-look Rams taking the floor for the team this season.
Leading Greeneview in scoring against Greenon on Tuesday with 12 points was junior Alex Horney (0).
Setting up a three from the corner is Greeneview sophomore Will Climie (24) as the students decking in their best holiday gear look on.
Greeneview senior Chase Allen (2) is the team’s leading scorer through six games.
JAMESTOWN — New faces are quickly gelling at Greeneview.
What is essentially a brand new team competes at the varsity level for the Rams this season after graduating its starting five from last year’s district finalist squad.
The results have been good through six games, though head coach Kyle Fulk said he still sees things as being incomplete to this point.
“These guys do play hard,” he said. “That hasn’t been an issue. Coming in as a new team, you worry about kids doing that but they seem to be unselfish.”
Greeneview picked up another Ohio Heritage Conference win by beating Greenon 56-42 Tuesday at home. The Rams are now 4-1 in league play and picking up where the league championship team from a year ago left off.
That isn’t to say there haven’t been some early growing pains for the young team. More than half of the team are made up of freshman and sophomores, and even with the starting five being made up of all upperclassmen there’s only one player who appeared in more than half of the team’s games last season.
“It’s definitely hard to get used to having a whole new set of guys,” Chase Allen, the team’s only returning senior, said. “We’re just wanting to game-by-game getting better and in practice know everyone’s pros and cons so we know what they do right.”
Greeneview (4-2) had its only league loss come at Cedarville after leading at halftime, and was coming off its first true struggle after a non-league home defeat to Versailles on Saturday. On that night points were tough to come by, something that wasn’t the case against Greenon.
The Christmas spirit was in full effect as multiple players shared the starring role. Allen scored 11 and was aided by another 11 by King Tripp and 12 by Alex Horney to lead the team.
Jumping out to an 8-2 lead in the opening quarter, Greeneview never looked back in building up a near 20-point lead before halftime and steadily maintaining the advantage during the second half.
A good 32 minutes for a team still looking to learn about itself.
“Before we had a lot of seniority to lift us up,” Allen said. “Now taking that leadership role and being able to lift guys out of any bad moments is something we need to improve on.”
Leadership is something Fulk said he is looking forward to seeing built as the team melds.
“It’s a spot that at least Chase hasn’t been in and Arman [Walker] being new to the program and trying to figure things out, it’s all continually growing,” he said. “That’s the key, right?
“Our big focus has been not on the outcome, but focusing on the process to get better every time out. We haven’t done that yet. We may have played better in our scrimmages than some of our games, so we know it’s there, we just got to find it.”
Greeneview has nine days to rest and figure out some of its issues before resuming play at the Miami Trace Holiday Tournament after its Christmas break.
Seeing how the group is already off to a good start in its new roles together, the extra time to work on improvements may only raise the ceiling of what the young team can accomplish.
“It’s been fun for us coaches to try to teach them stuff,” Fulk said. “And then also just try to figure out this new group, how they fit together what they do and get them to trust each other. It doesn’t always to smoothly, it’s just part of the process.”
Contact Steven Wright at 937-502-4498 and follow on X (formerly Twitter) @Steven_Wright_.
