The Randolph-Henry High School junior varsity (JV) girls basketball team holds a 1-5 record after completing the 2016 portion of its 2016-17 regular season schedule, but its head coach, Sandy Mayhew, can see the growth in her squad.

“These girls have worked hard and have come a long ways since the beginning,” she said.

Evaluating her team’s strengths and weaknesses exhibited thus far this year, Mayhew said, “We are handling pressure better but are still having trouble scoring at times.”

On the other end of the court, “we still need to work on man-to-man but have a pretty solid zone defense in place,” she said.

Some of these factors were evident in the Lady Statesmen’s most recent game Dec. 13 at Cumberland High School against the Lady Dukes JV team.

“Going into the Cumberland game, we knew they were going to be tough,” Mayhew said. “We had worked and practiced hard, especially on handling what we knew would be a full-court press from them.”

Indeed, the Lady Dukes did come out with a full-court press, and Randolph-Henry had difficulty handling it, falling behind in the first quarter.

“Finally in the second quarter, after making some adjustments, we began breaking it but still had trouble finding the mark, scoring-wise,” Mayhew said. “In the second half, we played even with the Lady Dukes. We switched to a box-and-one (defense) on one of their leading scorers. We held her scoreless in the second half by making the switch, but the first-half deficit was too much to overcome.”

Cumberland prevailed, with a 35-21 final score.

Looking forward on the schedule, the Lady Statesmen have some challenging tests ahead from the JV squads of James River District rivals.

“The toughest opponent will be the Lady Cougars of Nottoway,” Mayhew said. “We also will see Buckingham, as they will also be tough.”

Following this, Randolph-Henry will begin its rematches with teams it has already faced this season.

“I think our second half of the season will see a big improvement as we meet these teams for the second time,” Mayhew said.

The Lady Statesmen’s first game of 2017 will come against visiting Prince Edward County High School’s JV team on Wednesday, Jan. 4, with the tip-off set for 5:30 p.m.