L-R: #35 TRISTAHJA SLOCUM SR-FORWARD, #2 JJ WINSTON JR-GUARD, #2 JERMIYA WINSTON SR-GUARD, #24 JAMIEL WILLIAMS SR-FORWARD
While the girls made it to the Sweet 16 and boasted a 20-win season before falling to Langston Hughes on the road, the boys finished on a sour note, losing to Sequoyah in the region tournament, a loss that would knock them out of contention for the state playoffs.
“The way the season ended was a little bitter; our region was tough top to bottom, and it was not an ideal scenario, but we will build off of it,” said new Head Coach Dawson Wehunt. While a new head coach, he has been an assistant coach for the Wolves for four years.
Wehunt will turn to his upperclassmen experience in order to achieve success, such as juniors JJ Winston and Darnell Collins and senior Jamiel Williams, a three-year starter. “For the past few years, most of our young kids were leaders,” said Wehunt. “Even though they were young, they took it on themselves in order to be heard on and off the court as leaders.” Wehunt will also look to other guys, such as Parko Smith, who guards the other team’s best player and once played 32 minutes in a game. Marquez Elston is a returning starter, and Jason Weng, who is “the hardest worker on the team combined,” will see valuable minutes. A transfer in Braxton Anderson was an All-Region player at White County, so Rome has a lot of weapons they can use to their advantage.
His expectations for his guys are simple; don’t get caught up in the “ra-ra” of things, and keep it one game at a time. When it comes February, he expects his best to be at their best, and firing on all cylinders.
On the other side of the program, Head Coach Jared Hughes enters his second season as the leader of the Lady Wolves. His squad is coming off of a Sweet 16 trip, in which they lost to a state championship contender.
“It was my first year in the program. Even though we didn’t get the result we wanted, we felt like it was a good season; our girls fought hard every single game,” said Coach Hughes. Regardless of what other teams are doing, Coach Hughes wants his team to control what they can.
“We want to focus on what we can control, not what the results are. At Rome, we have a standard that our girls will uphold whenever they walk out of the locker room. We want to play hard, whether it be in practice, games, or the classroom. We require you as a player to have extreme attention to detail.”
The Lady Wolves will bring back a lot of experience for this year. Jermiya Winston, who in the words of Coach Hughes is an “all-around and all-world” superstar, will be returning for her senior year. Rome also returns senior Mo Slocum, who was a double-double machine and led the state in charges, averaging two charges a game. Sophomores Grace Hunter and Kensleigh Tribble will look to fill the shoes of Breanna Griffin and Ashanti Bowers, who graduated after last season, overall, the Lady Wolves return a strong core.
Both the Boys and Lady Wolf Programs have a lot to look forward to and have all the pieces they need and have a lot of shared optimism that should set them up for success in 24-25.
