Veterans girls’ scrimmage loss to Lamar County gives Lady Warhawks lots to work on at start of regular season

KATHLEEN — Veterans officially started their 2025-26 season on Tuesday in a 69-42 scrimmage loss to Lamar County, giving the Lady Warhawks and head coach Tracy Fendley plenty to work on as the season progresses.

Arguably number one on the list is turnovers, which were plentiful as Veterans went down 44-21 by halftime. The Lady Trojans were last year’s six seed in GHSA class A Division-1 and made it all the way to the Elite Eight.

Only losing one senior the two teams came in at nearly opposite sides of the spectrum. The Lady ‘Hawks lost five players over the offseason — four seniors and Nariah Nelson (Region 2-5A Player of the Year) — and now they field a roster with only three seniors on it.

That youth and inexperience showed as Veterans struggled to make the right reads. They often made passes regardless of proximity to defenders, resulting in easy pick offs for Lamar County who made a living in transition and poured in on from beyond the arc.

“I think we have to get back to practice and get after it. We have to just play good defense on one another and make our practices more intense, [especially with young players], they haven’t seen that type of physicality and defensive pressure,” Fendley said.

Fendley believes the intelligence of her younger players will help them learn quick, especially when they start to review film.

“I think we learn a lot from watching. [We’ve] got a group of intelligent ladies, and I think when they watch a video and they see it I think they can put it all together a little bit more,” she said.

It wasn’t all bad, though. When the Lady ‘Hawks were able to settle in through some of the defensive pressure they had some successful offense.

A couple of forced turnovers helped them into a 7-0 run after the Lady Trojans went up by 30. By that point the third quarter was almost halfway over, but it’s more important film for study.

“I think we gotta recognize our opportunities. When we have numbers to pursue the basket in the fast break and then whenever we don’t have the numbers, we need to pull it out and set up and execute an offense,” Fendley said. “I just think we had some young, inexperienced players in there, and [when] a little bit of defensive pressure was applied executing the offense was the last thing on their mind. It’s just gonna go down to practicing it, watching film and executing.”

“It may be something that comes halfway through the season. Some of these girls need that experience, that game experience. We’re hoping that by the time region gets here we’ve made all our mistakes, we’ve learned from them, we’ve watched film…[we hope] those girls are ready to play.”

UP NEXT

The Lady ‘Hawks open their regular season on Saturday, Nov. 15 against Warner Robins. The tipoff is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. at The Hangar.