Lady Eagles claim second consecutive Class AA MS championship
By Ken Lay
In an event that appeared somewhat uneventful, Gibbs Middle School’s girls basketball team won its second consecutive Knox County Middle School Class AA Tournament on its home floor.
The Lady Eagles concluded a perfect league and conference postseason tournament run with a 55-30 victory over rival Carter Wednesday night at Gibbs Middle School.
With the victory, Corryton’s resident girls middle school basketball team claimed a second straight tournament crown and clinched a bid in the state sectional tournament, which opens Feb. 1. The end goal for any basketball team is to win championships but for Gibbs and its coach, C.H. Qualls, what happened after the victory was much more important.
It was then when Qualls honored the team’s biggest inspiration.
“We have a seventh grader on our team, Eden Shockley, and she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,” Qualls said. “She played in every JV game and every varsity game except on days when she had treatments.
“She just had her last treatment and she’s cancer free now. Our team rallied around her. This is a big sisterhood. We were supposed to honor her during another game, but it snowed. And there was no way that I wasn’t going to honor that kid.”
That was the big reason that the Lady Eagles had to celebrate after the victory netted them a second straight tournament championship.
The win came rather easily as Gibbs controlled the contest from the outset, opening an 11-6 lead in the first quarter. Despite enduring some offensive troubles out of the gate, the Lady Eagles never trailed. They all but sealed their championship with a 19-4 second-quarter surge that gave them a 30-10 advantage at halftime.
In Wednesday night’s title game, it was eighth grader Rebekah Spierdowis that carried the bulk of the offensive load for the Lady Eagles. She led all scorers with 29 points, many that came as the result of offensive rebounds as she was a dominant force on the glass.
She was the only Gibbs player to post double figures in the scoring column. Natalie Brown added eight points and Caroline Howard finished with five.
“Rebekah was big for us,” Qualls said. “We started three eighth graders and two seventh graders and we have a team where every player, 1-through-12 can step up for us.”
Gibbs, which features one of the deepest rosters in the Knox County Middle School Basketball Conference, prevailed handily in the contest, but the Lady Hornets also took plenty of positives away from the title game as they will also play in the State Sectionals.
“We had a young team and we started a bunch of sixth graders,” Carter coach Dalton Freels said. “I’m super proud of these girls for making it here.
“The future is bright for these girls and for Carter Middle School. I’m proud of this group for the way they represent Carter Middle School.”
Callie Tull and Paisley Leach scored 12 points each for the Lady Hornets.
All-Tournament Team
Rebekah Spierdwis, Bri Banks and Natalie Brown represented the Lady Eagles on the all-tournament team. Paisley Leach and Callie Tull were named to the squad from Carter.
