Athens – Doug Trail’s seen the highest points of Summers County girls basketball.
He was an assistant when the program was winning titles in the ’90s and when it embarked on a historical five-peat from 2007-11. But now he’s officially taking the first seat on the bench as the head coach of the program, taking over for Rick Blevins.
Trail brings a plethora of experience and served as an assistant coach the past two seasons alongside Blevins.
But as he rises to the position of head coach, he’ll be tasked with guiding the program through a rebuild period which it hasn’t faced in nearly 30 years.
“I’ve been around since 1988 and this is the first year it’s been like this,” Trail said. “Covid really hurt this county. The freshmen here, they probably went two years where they didn’t have grade school basketball. It definitely hurt skill development. We had a lot of kids last year – I guess had 12 and the biggest thing I can say is this sophomore and junior class only got to play four games. That really hurts. They’re starting all over again.”
Trail’s vision for getting the program and pipeline back on track centers around building at the lower levels as well.
“You have to go back to the grade school levels and they have to play man (defense),” Trail said. “They can’t play zone. We’re going to have a new middle school coach this year. We’ve got to go to the middle school practices and get them started and get them doing the same things we’ve been doing in practice. That’s the way it used to be. We went all the way to the grade school level.”
Graduating two anchor pieces in Abby Persinger and Avery Lilly, Trail’s first task is getting his younger group up to speed, something he used June to accomplish.
“We went to Emory and Henry’s team camp and played at (the Concord Shootout) so we played about 24 games in two weeks,” Trail said at the Concord Shootout. “We had five freshmen out here so they’re not used to playing the pace of this game. Against Narrows, Va. we didn’t even bother to come. We turned around and played pretty good against (Beckley’s) pressure.”
For Trail, game experience has been the priority for his team throughout the offseason. The program had to rely on its departed seniors to often play at least 30 minutes a night, leaving little room for live reps. And while the sheer amount of games, couple with participation in Graham’s summer league may seem overwhelming, it’s giving his current roster some much needed experience and confidence.
“We’ve got a bunch of young kids,” Trail said. “I’ve got one starter that hasn’t been with us because she’s working right now, but it is good for the young kids. They’re getting a lot of playing time, and hopefully we’ll learn from that and get a lot better, because our defense has got to improve a lot. Our ball-handling has got to improve but our defense has got to improve a lot, too. And that’s, you know, you know us in the past. Our defense has always been solid. That’s just the way it’s been.”
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