Makenzie Mudd and several Lady Bulldogs are becoming accustomed to their new roles.

Mexico at Montgomery County Shootout Photo Gallery

The first-year head coach of the Mexico High School girls basketball program brought a younger roster to the team’s two shootouts this summer. Mudd said there were five girls out of the total 11 with the team on Monday at Montgomery County that have varsity experience.

“We’re playing varsity teams so I’m pretty impressed with their efforts against competition that they had never really seen before,” Mudd said. “We didn’t have enough to enter two separate teams so we just threw them all together. These freshmen are figuring it out on the fly, but I think they are doing a really good job and learning a lot about the intensity level of the varsity game.”

Mudd said Mexico and programs of their size typically are able to run out a junior varsity squad at summer scrimmage events but have run into scheduling conflicts this summer. 

“It makes it hard because we don’t have set plays figured out yet because they haven’t all been able to come to stuff,” Mudd said. “We’re just rolling with it and playing basketball.”

On Monday, Mexico decided all three of its games by a bucket as it lost to Harrisburg by two points and Higbee by three points. The Lady Bulldogs’ game against Louisiana went down to the wire as Louisiana fought back to tie the game at 23 points before reigning leading scorer and all-conference player Claire Hudson drove to the rim for the winning layup in the final seconds.

Mudd said the junior Hudson has been a valuable leader as she has guided the younger players this summer. Addison Heim, Karlee Sefrit and Kylie Burnett are returning players from a season ago that have helped girls like freshman Grace Hudson, Claire’s younger sister.

“They’ve also been doing a lot of helping out these younger girls in being remodels on the court and helping on the bench with letting them know, ‘Hey, make sure you’re paying attention to this so when you go in, you’re prepared.’”

Just on Monday, Mudd said she saw improvements during the day as she admitted Mexico didn’t do well rebounding in the tight loss to Harrisburg but fixed that issue while playing solid defense in the victory against Louisiana.

Overall this summer, Mudd said it has been impressive as the Lady Bulldogs only had seven girls at a shootout in Harrisburg on June 20. Mexico lost all three of its games but by close margins to Fayette, Cairo and Pilot Grove.