Play hard, play smart and play together – “The Polk Way” pervades the locker room as basketball season gears up at Polk County High School.
Varsity boys basketball coach Josh McEntire has five seniors, three juniors and four sophomores making up his squad this season. In that mix are six returning varsity players, five of whom grabbed a lot of time on court last season.
“I expect significant improvements this season because we had a great summer working together and continue to improve in all areas as a team,” McEntire said.
The Wolverines take it back to the net after an 11-14 overall season and 8-6 in conference play last year.
“The players are starting to understand how hard they need to work to have a successful basketball program,” McEntire said. “Our strengths this year will be experience in the front court. One of our biggest weakness this year will be in the backcourt. Because of injuries we will be very young at shooting guard and point guard.”
McEntire looks to Deion Twitty, Sam Vining, Joel Booker and Alec Philpott to lead the team.
“They worked really hard the last few years to become better basketball players,” he said.
Now they will just need to step up, especially against ever-tough conference opponents Hendersonville and Mitchell.