It was going to be an interesting new journey for Winston Academy basketball coach Jordan Graham.
After his first season as a head coach came to an end on the hardwood, Graham moved over to the track to coach those athletes. But those plans changed quickly with weather and COVID-19 taking its toll. It kept the Patriots from participating in a single meet and they hardly got a chance to prepare for one.
“We didn’t really get to practice too much unfortunately,” Graham said. “It rained pretty much two weeks straight and then when baseball started, we couldn’t get a lot of our core guys in like Hayes Gregory and Jett Joiner. We didn’t even get to run a meet and probably won’t be able to looking at how all of this is going.”
Before the interruption of the season happened, Graham did see plenty of athletes that stood out like Curry Black and Jett Joiner on the high school squad and Cole Haab in the junior high. Black and Joiner were going to be staples on the relay teams and were expected to run in most of the events, as was Haab with junior high.
The good news is that all three of those players will return next year as Black will be a senior, Joiner a sophomore and Haab a freshman. In fact, Graham believes his whole roster will be returning next season. It makes for some exciting times ahead for the Patriots and that program.
“I think there’s definitely a lot of promise in athletics in general,” Graham said. “Getting to see these guys in track, you can see just how athletic some of these guys are. You can tell that there’s a lot of promise with our track program. We were junior high district champions in the last few years ago there’s a lot of promise and potential with our young group. I know a lot of our runners are underclassmen and that’s a definite positive.”
