By George Edgar
Special to The Sports Paper
PORT ORCHARD – Everyone who plays basketball wants to play in the game. Everyone wants to start the game, and finish is it as well. But there are only so many starting spots to go around. There are only five in basketball. Someone has to start the game on the bench.
But coming off the bench isn’t always a bad thing. Just ask Hayley O’Dell of South Kitsap’s girl’s basketball team.
Hayley O’Dell
When South needs a little spark in its offense or a stop or rebound on defense, O’Dell is the one who provides it. Actually, she’s more than a spark, since she led the Wolves last season by scoring 11.5 points per game.
Those first few minutes on the bench gives the 5-foot-11 O’Dell a good look at the game.
“It gives her the opportunity to see how the game is going to play out,” said South Kitsap coach Mike Hulet. “She gives us a boost off the bench. She’s accepted it really well. If she had the chance, she would start, especially since it’s her senior year. But she comes in more comfortable, and relaxed.”
Against Lakes in a non-league game, she provided a couple of defensive stops with rebounds to break open a stagnant game against the Lancers, enabling a 50-37 win for South, and she finished with seven points and six rebounds.
The Wolves open their Narrows League schedule on Wednesday night at Bellarmine Prep in Tacoma.
“I play better off the bench,” O’Dell said, “as long as I get to play. I get a feel for the intensity, and see how they’re playing the angles and how they’re playing the floor. But I just want to play, that’s the main thing. It’s not important that I start, as long as I play. That’s what satisfies me.”
O’Dell was also an incredible 32 of 33 from the free throw line last season. That’s 97 percent, if you’re trying to calculate the numbers. What makes it more impressive is when she comes to the line, she shoots as soon as she gets the ball from the referee, without even bouncing it to get a feel for it.
“I don’t like thinking too much about it,” she said of her free throws. “I just naturally shoot it. Last year is when I started doing it.”
“She doesn’t set up or over thinks it,” Hulet said. “I don’t know how, but it works.”
O’Dell has a 3.7 grade point average at South, and has already been accepted at two Christian schools – HardingCollege in Searcy, Arkansas and Oklahoma Christian in Edmond, Oklahoma, to play basketball. Where she decides to go depends on the scholarship offer, even if it didn’t involve basketball.
“It’s the biggest part of my life,” O’Dell said of her faith. “I would always choose it over basketball; it’s the most important to me.”
South was out of the playoff picture last season, and making the playoffs is just as important for O’Dell, as she wants her senior year to keep going into the post-season.
What is the secret to getting there?
“We have to work together, because we have lots of talent,” O’Dell said. “We have to execute, and be positive, and work together as a team.”
Even if it means coming off the bench.