In a season of firsts,  today will continue that trend as the ACGC girls basketball team kicks off its inaugural 2016-2017 season.

Today officially marks the start of first practices for Iowa high school girls basketball teams and the official first practice of ACGC Lady Charger basketball. The Lady Chargers will be bringing together two opposite ends of the spectrum from last season with a senior laden Adair-Casey squad who went 18-4 and a very youthful Guthrie Center squad who went 4-17 last season. The experience and youth will find balance here in the new year as the Adair-Casey squad from last season loosed four seniors to graduation.

Certainly a lot of excitement filling ACGC athletics, especially after a solid volleyball season and crowning a girls individual state cross country champion with Kate Crawford. All that excitement if now starting to funnel into ACGC basketball, and it starts at the top with first year head coach James Blythe. Raccoon Valley Radio spoke with coach Blythe as he talked about how excited his is about coaching in such a supportive community.

“Excitement’s really the key word. I think the kids are really excited about the possibilities. I’ve gotten the chance to meet a few of the parents so far and they’ve been very supportive, very encouraging and I think that’s what I find in this community, that’s why I wanted this job,” explained coach Blythe.

Coach further went on to describe how hard working the kids are and how each parent wants their kids to be able to receive all the opportunities than can.

“These are kids who aren’t afraid to work hard, their parents are very supportive and their really concerned about making sure their kids get the opportunities they should have and I’m just excited to be a part of that,” explained coach Blythe.

Coach Blythe and his newly formed Lady Chargers will have quite the abbreviated time table as their first bout of game action occurs in just over 14 days.