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Elkton Boys Basketball
Team Rundown:
Elkton is not a basketball school.
But with the right mindset, head
coach Gary Trout believes that this
team can achieve more than last sea-
son’s six-win squad.
“These kids they haven’t even
scratched their potential in basket-
ball yet. And they’re a group of kids
that hasn’t had a lot of success on
the basketball court and to see them
start to realize how good they can be
it really all starts with that work eth-
ic and establishing that kind of blue
collar mentality, which these kids al-
ready have. It’s just how to apply it
here and how to put it in the right
direction,” said Trout.
Trout notes that the kids he coach-
es know how to work hard. The ma-
jority play football in the fall, basket-
ball in the winter, baseball in spring
and then work in the summer. Trout
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DELIVER
is working to harness this mentality
and to apply it to basketball.
“They come from good solid fam-
ilies but you know, but our basket-
ball skills are a little bit lacking. And
that’s fine. But if they buy in to the
blue-collar attitude, I think we’re
going to be fine and the potential is
unlimited,” said Trout. “If we start
trying to be a bunch of NBA players,
we’re going to struggle.”
The personification of this hard
work comes in the form of senior
guard Brad Doudna. Doudna fin-
ished last season averaging a dou-
ble-double in points and rebounds
and was on second-team all-league.
As a leader of the team, Doudna
points out that its success revolves
around understanding what comes
first to the team.
“It has to be teammates; team; my-
self,” he said.
Team Perspective
with Jesse Abraham:
On changing team attitudes:
Last year we did pretty good but we
still dogged on each other when we
got upset and were losing and it was
like that in football too. But this year
in football we changed our whole
mindset with everything. Every-
one got along, whenever something
wasn’t going right for us we tried to
keep our heads up and work our way
through it and that’s what we plan to
do with basketball, too.
Whenever someone is having a
rough day or, we always keep the
practice hype up. Whenever we’re
going through drills we’re always,
okay, let’s go boys, let’s go, get them
pumped up and when someone
messes up or head drops down we
pick them up, immediately.
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Last year we did good but then
we didn’t. We got in our heads and
I think we lost the game before we
even got out there.
On what would make a successful season:
What I think about for a good sea-
son is just we want to develop good
leaders. And not just because if we
leave we don’t want leaders to be bad
next year, we want the previous peo-
ple, from freshmen up, to have good
leaders and we all want to be a family,
just like football.
Leadership and keeping people’s
heads up and being a family change
the way things go.
On a teammate he is excited about:
Well, we did bring a player in, that
hasn’t played previous years, Tren-
tyn, and he’s stepped up in practice
without ever playing basketball. He
is an amazing athlete and he has
some good stuff already.