A year after winning the first state championship in school history, the Northwood girls basketball team is once again the team to beat in Chatham County.
The Chargers are coming off a historic season that saw them go 30-1 overall and win their final 21 games, including a 70-42 beatdown of Enka in the 3A state championship game.
Now, head coach Kerri Snipes is tasked with trying to help her team repeat.
One thing Northwood will have to deal with is the loss of Olivia Porter, who led the team in points (16.4), rebounds (6.4), assists (3.8) and steals (4.3) in 2021-22. Porter is now in college at Michigan State, and the Chargers will have to find a way to mitigate her not being on the court with them this winter.
Northwood does still have plenty of talent on its roster, though. The Chargers have two players on their roster who are committed to play collegiately at Division-I schools — seniors Gianna McManaman (New Mexico) and Te’Keyah Bland (Howard).
Bland is the Northwood’s tallest player at 6-foot-1 and the team’s top returning scorer (8.8 points per game). She’ll be tasked with anchoring the Chargers’ lineup as both a low-post scorer and rim-protector.
“(Te’Keyah) has certainly worked hard over the last three years,” Snipes told the N+R earlier this offseason. “She’s really gotten a lot stronger, especially this past season, so that’s what we’ve continued to work on this offseason. We’re trying to make sure she can be physical and can compete.”
Behind Northwood, the county’s other five teams will all have potential to make the state playoffs, as four of them did so in 2021-22. The teams with the biggest expectations among this next tier of schools are Seaforth and Chatham Charter, who combined to go 38-17 overall last season.
The Hawks went 19-8 in their first season as a program in 2021-22 and won the Mid-Carolina 1A/2A Conference with a 12-0 mark in league play. Head coach Charles Byrd welcomes back all of his players from last year’s team, including three players who averaged at least 10 points per game.
The top scorer for Seaforth last season was sophomore Gabrielle Wright, who averaged 15.6 points and 10.0 rebounds as a freshman last winter. Sophomore Peyton Collins (12.0) and junior Hannah Ajayi (10.8) also averaged in double-figures.
Chatham Central and Jordan-Matthews also belong to the Mid-Carolina Conference. The Bears finished 14-14 overall last winter, but they were the second best team in the league standings at 9-2, with their only losses coming against Seaforth.
The Jets matched the Jordan-Matthews boys team with an overall record of 5-17. J-M will have its work cut out for it this season, as the team graduated its top two scorers from last year — Ellia Wright and Tatyn Siler.
Chatham Charter, meanwhile, went 19-9 overall last winter and 7-1 in league play. The Knights are led by senior Tamaya Walden — who averaged a county-high 22.0 points per game last season. Walden is the only active girls basketball player in the county with at least 1,000 career points (1,188).
Last season, the Knights won the Central Tar Heel Conference tournament title before falling to Clover Garden School, 53-47, in the second round of the 2A state playoffs. Chatham Charter has an overall record of 54-16 since the start of the 2019-20 season.
Chatham Charter’s top rival in its conference is Woods Charter, which is coming off a 12-7 campaign in 2021-22. The Wolves will be without their top scorer from last season, though, as junior Lexi Smollen (19.2 points per game) transferred to Chapel Hill High over the offseason.
The top returning scorer for the Wolves this winter is junior Caroline Mitchell, who averaged 10.7 points per game last season. Mitchell scored at least 20 points on three occasions last season, including a 20-point performance against Southside High in the first round of the 1A playoffs.
Sports Editor Jeremy Vernon can be reached at jeremy@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @jbo_vernon.