By Brad Greer
While most high school and college students are relaxing on the beach or just being lazy this summer, two local basketball teams are hard at work preparing for the upcoming season.

The North and South Panola boys basketball teams, along with six other schools, participated in the first annual South Panola Shootout Saturday.

The all-day event took place at the South Panola gym and at Batesville Junior High.  For Tiger head coach Charlie Howard, the scrimmages were a chance to evaluate some players that will be playing other sports in the fall.

“Every sport, every athletic sporting event has become a year-round thing. If we don’t do anything in the summer, then we are just that much farther behind the schools that do have summer workouts,” said Howard.  

The Tigers will return three starters from last year’s squad that lost to Starkville in the first round of the Region 2-5A district tournament.

“We have some guys that are playing on the football team during the fall,” Howard said. This gives them a chance to play with the basketball team during the summer months because I won’t see them again until December, or whenever their season comes to an end. This gives me a chance to look at them and see who can help us on the basketball floor.

Meanwhile at North Panola, leading candidate for boys basketball head coach Leroy Boyd sees these workouts as a way to get familiar with his new surroundings.

“Right now my main objective is to see how these kids play and how they communicate with each other on the floor and to put them in the right position to help us be successful. Also I am just looking for some players,” Boyd said.

Boyd has not seen some players because of the distance they live from the school.

“So the ones we have here now are the one we are working with and hopefully, they will improve,” said Boyd,  who replaces Chris Yancy who pulled double duty last season as both girls and boys coach.

Yancy meanwhile will serve as girls coach this upcoming season. Boyd has held coaching stints at Greenville-O’Bannon and at Greenville-St. Joseph’s. Most recently, he spent four seasons at Marks Palmer.

Both South Panola and North Panola came away Saturday with mixed results as the Tigers downed the Cougars 46-30 in the first game of the day. The Tigers then defeated Durant’s ‘B’ team 36-22 and Durant’s varsity by the score of 39-24.   

North Panola, meanwhile, fell to Coffeeville 42-41 in other action.