WEST ALEXANDRIA — Twin Valley South and Brookville hosted the annual summer league for varsity basketball on Monday, June 29, Tuesday, June 30 and Wednesday, July 1, where Carlisle went undefeated over the six game stretch.
Twin Valley South won five games and losing to Carlisle to finish with the second best record.
Brookville, the other host team, finished with four wins but forfeited two games tying them for third with defending Division IV state champion Tri-Village who also finished with four wins and two losses.
Tri-Village is coming off an undefeated state championship season, but looks to replace a large portion of the team.
Preble Shawnee won two of their six games to tie with Eaton for the fifth best record. Eaton finished with two wins despite the ongoing search for a head coach for the program. They were coached by JV coach Randy McKinney during camp, open gyms and the games at TVS and Brookville over the week.
Milton Union won one game to finish in seventh and Dixie found themselves in the basement of the summer league standings, failing to win a game.
Twin Valley South Head coach and Athletic Director Tony Augspurger explained why summer league is so valuable to teams across the area: “It’s a great local way to get five nights of competition. For the most part, coaches only do the actual coaching one or two nights of the tourney, but the kids get to play together. We play a 40 minute running clock and with four teams and two gyms per site, we know that our kids are going to get two games in with no down time.”
This year Augspurger used the system to evaluate players who are battling to make the varsity squad this fall.
“This year it has been good for me because I really wasn’t sure who I had that was varsity ready,” he said. “It has enabled me to take a look at 12 different kids against local competition. That is more than I usually include. I’ve been pleased with our effort in particular on the defensive end and I’m hoping that our summer league success helps us from a confidence standpoint when we hit the regular season.”
According to Augspurger, summer league was started in 1994 by one-time Brookville head coach Scott Caudill. The eight-team format started in the late 1990s when Twin Valley South began hosting because the school had two playable gyms. Caudill stepped down at the same time and Augspurger took charge of the league.
Augspurger continued to say the league has recently cut down in size, and teams like National Trail and Tri-County North also acted as host teams during the summer league’s history. Along with North and Trail, Arcanum, Franklin Monroe, Northridge and Miami East were all members of the league at one point in time.
The league also had more games in the past, but coaches decided to cut down on the games to avoid playing teams multiple times.
“We used to go for seven nights and then for six, but have backed off to five because we didn’t really want to play each other as often as we did when we were playing a bunch of teams twice and then possibly again in the tournament,” Augspurger said. “The way it is set up now, we only play one team twice in the four-night regular season tourney and I make sure we don’t play that team in the first round of the tourney.”
The tournament will be held Wednesday, July 8 at Brookville High School starting at 5:30 p.m.
