By Donnie Yeager Jr.
For The Times Leader
BEALLSVILLE - Beallsville High School has been steeped in tradition for most of its existence, with the Blue Devil basketball programs commonly putting together impressive records and collecting various team and individual awards despite the small size of the school.
This winter, Beallsville will do something relatively unseen in the basketball landscape of the Ohio Valley: field a co-ed team.
Hamstrung with low numbers, there will be a scant 10 players suiting up for the Big Blue on the hardwood; seven boys and three girls. Under Ohio High School Athletic Association rules, a co-ed team is well within regulations. The team will play a full schedule against boys teams.
When asked how the Blue Devils came to this point, first-year head coach Aaron Burga was pretty straightforward about the situation.
"When we came into practice the first day, there were only three girls and four boys, so things were looking pretty bleak. I told the boys that I wasn't going to practice because I thought kids would just show up a week before the season started to play, and it just wasn't fair to the guys who came to do it like that, so I said I was shutting it down and if anything changed I'd let them know and we'd start right back up. The latest I had heard on Thursday of that week was that our AD was going to call the OHSAA and tell them we weren't going to have a season. They had already announced they were canceling the girls season."
Burga continued; "I ended up getting a call that morning that we were going to have a team. We had eight boys and two girls to begin with, and I was like 'Oh my goodness!' We had kind of jokingly talked about it and mentioned it, but we didn't think the girls would have any interest in going that route, so it wasn't something we had thought much more about. Basically, a couple of the kids that were dedicated and really wanted to have a season, and didn't want to transfer or anything like that, came together as a group and made a commitment that these individuals were going to play. We ended up picking up another girl who chose basketball over club volleyball. Some other things happened, and now we are at the point where we have seven boys and three girls for the team."
Burga was asked about his outlook on the season and he stated "I would say our main goal this year is to work on the fundamentals and start to build something. It's not something that's going to happen overnight, we aren't going to walk in overnight and have success, It's just trying to get a standard set of how things are going to be going forward.
"For this year, we are kind of using duct tape to hold things together essentially to get through this year. Our hopes are that with some eighth graders coming up, we will have some depth with the boys and the girls next year to kind of get back to normal with things."
With the roster consisting of 10 players, Burga stated that the starters are currently up in the air, however, he also stated that the team had the hopes to go forward with a full varsity and junior varsity schedule with each player playing their maximum six quarters per night with the varsity starters still playing two quarters per night in the JV game as a goal. Although the roster does not have a single senior, the ten-player roster sports five juniors, four sophomores, and one freshman.
Burga was complimentary of his roster. Marky Louden is a junior who will play guard.
The next junior on the roster is forward Thorn Stoffel.
Another junior is forward Garrett Perkins.
"Garrett is going to be our big man that can hopefully be somewhat of a center for us, but has a great shot and can knock down 10-15 free throws in a row. He's also the quarterback for the football team, so he's just that natural athlete that can pick up anything and be good at it."
Kinley Hughes is a junior who will play guard.
The final junior is guard Chloe McCulley.
For the sophomores, Chancellor Allen is chalked in to play guard. Classmate Lamar Anderson will fill a forward position. Logan Taylor is a sophomore who will be another forward.
Rounding out the tenth-grade class is guard Kaylee Hagan.
Frosh Kolten Trigg is slated to see time at guard.
Burga also had nothing but good things to say about his assistant coach.
"I was very fortunate to have a gentleman named Mike Snell agree to help me and be my head assistant. He runs a lot of the practice. He was a head coach at Ohio Valley University, and I think he has been a head coach for about 18 of the last 20 years at a couple of different places. I was very fortunate to have things work out where he was able to be a part of this, and I've been leaning on his army lack of experience."