After finishing last year with a trip to the state playoffs, the forecast for this season looks good despite losing some key players to graduation. The Lady Panthers remain optimistic even though they stumbled out of the gate to a 2-5 start.

“It’s tough when you lose as many seniors as we did, but that’s the case almost every year,” head coach Shane Ratliff said.

The Lady Panthers lost arguably their best player, and one of the best in school history,  in Katie Wilson, the school’s all-time leading scorer, and will be looking for a new leader to take her place.

“As of right now, we haven’t had anyone step into that role. She was our go-to girl last year, but I’ve talked to a couple of girls about the possibility of it being them,” Ratliff said. “I think there are a number of girls capable of stepping into that leadership role, whether it be by example or vocally.”

Assistant coach Emily Woodward agreed with Ratliff.  “I think that Riley Clark and Alli Jones are still learning how they can play together a little more,” Woodward said. “I don’t think that it will end up being just one person like last year, but more of a committee type of thing with one working to score a little more while the other will have to be more of the creator.”

Woodward temporarily took over in December as head coach while Ratliff took a few weeks off to be with his newborn son and his wife.  “I knew I wouldn’t be there for the Mundy’s Mill and McIntosh games, and I might miss a few more,” Ratliff said. “She [Woodward] has coached with me for four years, so I think she’ll be just fine. I don’t think we’ll miss a beat.”

The Lady Panthers, who started 0-2 with Ratliff,  lost 60-35 against Mundy’s Mill and 30-29 at McIntosh with Woodward before winning their first game against Morrow, 52-35.  The loss to McIntosh came on a last-second buzzer beater.

“One of the girls said, ‘We’re 1-4,’ and I said back, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy to be 1-4′,” Woodward said. “We were all just really excited that we finally got things to click and to get that first win. I think I was really nervous in that first game,” Woodward said with a laugh. “I wasn’t 100 percent sure what I was doing, so [the Mundy’s Mill game] was a learning experience coaching them for the first time. But [in the McIntosh game], the girls came out and played really hard and I think we should have won, but they had that buzzer beater. [Against Morrow], we finally had it all click into place.”

Against McIntosh, the girls took a 16-11 lead into halftime, but only scored two points in the third quarter.  “We need to be able to score more points,” junior guard Alli Jones said. “It’s hard to win games when you only score two points in a quarter, and that falls on us.”

After the break, the girls were outscored 19-13. They shot 28 percent from the field and 23 percent from three-point range but lost as McIntosh made a last-second buzzer beater.

“I thought we played pretty good defense for most of the night,” junior forward Dylan Patterson said. “We just couldn’t get our shots to fall.”