Preps Sports

Ooltewah coach Jesse Nayadley constantly reminds Mikhail Creech that every time he steps on a basketball court, he's the best athlete on the floor and one who can influence the result of a basketball game.

Banged here and bruised there they might have been, Chattanooga teams captured three of the premium spots and just missed on two others in the first day of the Tennessee state duals.

John Lennon has resigned as Signal Mountain's wrestling coach, effectively immediately. Lennon said school principal Dr. Tom McCullough had accepted his resignation and that both planned for him to remain as the head of the school's theatre department.

Soddy-Daisy and Cleveland are a step away from the Tennessee Division I Class AAA state championship match, Hixson came up a step shy of the A/AA title bout and Central barely allowed its opponents any steps at all.

The recipe was ripe for disaster at LaFayette High School. The Ramblers were hosting Walker County rival Ridgeland on Senior Night with a top-two region finish on the line. It was enough to make LaFayette coach Tommy Swanson a little irritable during the day.

For several years now, LaQuisha Jackson has had a plan in mind for her future. Since her breakout freshman season in which she became Tennessee's fastest female sprinter, Jackson began to focus on becoming not just the best in her home state but in the nation and eventually reaching the Olympics.

Try as he might, Mike Duffie cannot hide the frustration. The Dalton High School boys’ basketball coach has been around the game long enough to know when something isn’t right, and what’s happened to Tristen Harrell has Duffie a bit on edge.

D'Mondta Smith doesn't appear to have much in the way of shortcomings when he's on a basketball court. Pressed into noting one, his Hixson High School coach, Alex Disbrow, said, "I've had to talk him into shooting more."