GREENLAND (KFSM) - The 2014 basketball season wasn't a normal year for the Greenland Lady Pirates. Mainly because they failed to win a state championship.
That's the pressure that the program deals with on a yearly basis as they have emerged as one of the premiere small school basketball programs in Arkansas.
The tradition started with coach Clay Reeves in the early 1990s but has been carried forward with Alan Barton at the helm. The loss in the opening round of the regional tournament last season was a tough pill to swallow but one that made the offseason job of the head coach a little easier.
"Our goal is to be one of the last two teams playing every year and with us being knocked out in the first round of regional, it kind of stung a few of these young ladies," Barton said. "They've shown that hard work pays off."
The early postseason exit ended their hopes of three straight state titles but the Lady Pirates are back in the title game on Thursday as they face Valley Springs in Hot Springs.
"We knew coming into this year that we would have an OK team and we wanted to work hard in the offseason to be the best that we could be," senior Lainey Boone said.
"We didn't try to get back at anybody from last year but we tried to just get a lot further because this is what was expected of us last year so we tried to make people proud this year," senior Kelsey Vaughn said.