LOSS OF PATTERSON AFFECTS HAR-BER ON, OFF COURT

— What happens on the court during the upcoming Springdale Har-Ber girls basketball season hardly seems to matter after what the Lady Wildcats have had to deal with off it.

While Har-Ber was expected to be one of the top teams in the 7A-West Conference coming into the 2010-11 season — picked to fi nish third by league coaches — those high hopes took the ultimate hit on Sept. 4. That was the day Har-Ber senior Micayla Patterson was tragically killed in an automobile accident in Tulsa, Okla., shortly after attending a John Mayer concert.

Patterson’s death affected the entire school and community. And it still affects the Lady Wildcats today.

“The tough times are like when we’ve gotten our picture made or different times that bring back memories that make you sad, like this interview,” Har-Ber coach Sandy Wright said. “It’s going to be a rough year, off and on, throughout the whole year, I think.”

Patterson was one of Har-Ber’s top returning players and expected to be the unquestioned team leader heading into her senior season. Now, the Lady Wildcats are still trying to figure out how to move on without her. Instead of an up-tempo style, the loss of Patterson will force Har-Ber to slow things down this season. And without their top guard at the No. 3 spot, the Lady Wildcats backcourt depth takes a huge hit.

But even talking about a season without Patterson is still dift cult.

“People have told me that our kids will rally around what has happened,” Wright said. “But I just know it’s going to be really hard to replace a kid of her caliber. We just don’t have anybody of her stature that’s going to be able to immediately step in and play that (No.3) position as well as she was going to. But I also don’t want to use that as an excuse because I know we’ve got to keep moving on and working every day to try to improve in those areas.”

Har-Ber will continue on, good or bad. And every step of the way, Patterson will still be with them.

“We’re going to put her jersey on the bench with us at every game,” Wright said. “And we haven’t done anything to her locker. It’s just like it was when she left.

“We’re just going to try to keep her memory alive.”

The Lady Wildcats chances of finishing at or near the top of the 7A-West certainly have taken a hit. But Wright still believes Har-Ber has plenty of talent back from last year’s 15-15 team, including 6-foot-1 junior post Caroline Eubanks, 5-10 senior post Maggie Gartner and guards Chani Wolf and Jessica Olson.

“We have three pretty solid post players, but when we go to the bench it’s mostly guards,” Wright said. “So right now we’re going to probably go with the three posts (in the starting lineup), but if we sub we’ll be more guard oriented.”

Eubanks averaged 10 point ands eight rebounds as a sophomore and Gardner chipped in another six points and seven rebounds per game last season. Now both could be the center of the Har-Ber offense after the loss of Patterson.

“It’s definitely going to change things,” Wright said. “We’ll be less of a pressing team because she was a big factor in our press. Our pace of the game will be diff erent because she ran the fl oor so well. So we’re going to be more post-oriented now and we won’t be as balanced as we were. We’ll have to throw it inside more and crash the boards.”

Sports, Pages 14 on 10/31/2010

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