‘Years trying to get to that point.’ Owsley County girls make 1st Sweet 16 in school history
No Owsley County High School basketball team, boys or girls, had reached the Sweet 16 — until now.
The Owsley County girls made history on Saturday when, in a packed Estill County gym, the Owls defeated the host Engineers 51-46 to take the 14th Region title. It was Owsley County’s second region title game appearance in three seasons.
“It’s every coach’s and player’s dream to, you know, not only win a region, but also to play in the Sweet 16,” said head coach Travis Smith, a former Owsley County basketball player himself. “It’s just such a special event. I don’t think there’s another tournament in the nation, you know, where it’s all the classes are together that’s as special as this is.”
The Owls (26-9), following a disappointing 67-65 overtime loss at Danville in their final game of the regular season, have won five straight games to reach Rupp Arena. The roster features four veteran leaders and eight players in seventh, eighth or ninth grade, including freshman center Macey Brown (12.0 points and 11.4 rebounds per game). Seniors Shelby Murray (3.7 points) and Carly Smith (16.1 points), junior Aaliyah Lynch (12.0 points) and sophomore Addison Terry (13.8 points) have been playing together since grade school.
Carly Smith, the daughter of Travis Smith, is the team’s leading scorer and the 14th Region’s Miss Kentucky Basketball candidate. Lynch is the daughter of assistant coach Brent Lynch. The coaches started together on Owsley County’s boys basketball team before graduating in 1997, and they put their daughters in basketball at a young age.
“I think after the horn sounded,” Smith said, “that you saw a display of emotion that had been bottled up inside of them for the past four or five years trying to get to that point. And I think they felt the pressure of not only the school but the community, and and then the pressure that they put on their self. But at the same time, it made it even more special for them.”
The Owls represent a high school with an enrollment of 187, in a town, Booneville, that only just got its first stoplight in the past 15 years and has no fast food chains. Owsley County itself has a population of about 4,000. Former Owsley County history teacher, athletic director, baseball and golf coach Deron Mays, now with Bluegrass Sports Nation, said the community couldn’t be prouder.
“It’s hard to compete when you’re smaller,” Mays said. “You know, I mean, you get your Perry (County) Centrals, and all those schools, Letcher (County Central), about 8(00) or 900 students. That’s why we’ve never been there before. It’s hard to overcome all that. I’ll tell you what, it got emotional the other night, that game. And Owsley County came out of the woodwork. People from Ohio that I hadn’t seen in years come out. Indiana and Ohio and all over Kentucky that moved out for jobs, they came for that final game the other night.”
In an effort to help his team become the best it could be, Travis Smith assembled a difficult schedule packed with teams utilizing different styles of play. That effort paid off in both the Owls’ region semifinals win against Perry County Central (75-69) and the championship game versus Estill County.
”Perry Central … they were fast up and down the floor, shooting threes. That game was lightning fast. Both teams were playing on the edge of out of control for the entire game and came down to who made that last run,” Smith said. “And then the polar opposite with Estill County, really slowed us down, really controlled the pace and tried to put us in a game … I’m sure they wanted to keep it under 50. So I think both those games gives us pieces and gives us skills and things that we need going forward to try to win, win a tournament game, and it allowed us to showcase different areas of our game which made this team special.”
The message to the team ahead of the Sweet 16?
“It’s trying to try to keep everything the same,” Smith said. “We’ve talked to the players about, you know, trying to keep the outside noise (out) … . And enjoy it, but at the same time, try to block, you know, part of it out so that we can stay focused, you know, on what’s in front of us and what’s going forward.”
The Owls will face 4th Region champion Bowling Green (23-10) at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the first round of the Sweet 16.
This story was originally published March 12, 2024 at 1:37 PM.
