CHARLESTON GIRLS RETURN NINE LETTER WINNERS

With an extremely experienced team featuring a whopping nine players who saw some form of varsity experience last season, Charleston girls basketball coach Bev Wright is looking for good things from the Lady Blue Jays this year."We have a lot of girls who played varsity, so we should be a lot better than last year," said Wright, whose squad posted an 11-13 record last season. "We're hoping for a better season, but you know how that goes. You never know what's going to happen."While the Lady Blue Jays won't have much height to speak of -- their tallest player is about 5-feet-9 -- Wright hopes they can compensate with impressive quickness."We won't be big but we'll have a lot of quickness," Wright said.

Charleston returns its leading scorer from last season in 5-foot-5 junior Alicia Rodgers, who averaged nearly 14 points per game as a sophomore."She's a good shooter and she improved a lot on defense last year, but she still has to work on it," said Wright.

Two more of the leading scorers from last year's team return in 5-3 senior Tara Hall and 5-5 senior Jodi Bledsoe, who averaged about 10 and seven points per game, respectively.

Shatoya Riggins, a 5-7 junior, played a lot last year while five other players spent time on both the JV and varsity: 5-9 jr. Amy Simmons, 5-5 junior Tawanna Whitney, 5-7 sophomore Monesha Murray, 5-7 sophomore Kanikca Williams and 5-1 sophomore Tyshanta Williams.

Adding even more depth will be 5-7 junior Rachael Rowe and 5-1 freshman Dreelle Mathis.

Charleston opened the season Nov. 22 at Oran.