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Jul. 15—HENDERSON — The Crossroads Christian women’s basketball team will have another new coach leading the program ahead of the 2021-22 season in Adrine Pettaway, who is a former player and coach at Northern Vance High School.

Pettaway said that coaching at Northern Vance helped her get comfortable when it came to leading others and is looking forward to bringing her passion and intensity for basketball to Crossroads in a few months.

“I’m really excited about the season and the new opportunity,” Pettaway said. “I missed out on the chance to become a head coach at Vance County [High School] but I got connected with [Crossroads athletic director] Scottie Richardson and that got the ball rolling.”

Pettaway said that her time at Northern Vance came with plenty of challenges. In her three years leading the team, Northern Vance only tallied six victories and registered an 0-22 record during the 2016-17 season.

Although Northern Vance was unable to keep up with the other teams in its conference, Pettaway said that it was a rewarding experience to see her players come together through the adversity by consistently working to get better every day in practice.

When Northern and Southern Vance were consolidated into Vance County High School in 2018, Pettaway joined the women’s basketball staff as an assistant to Sheila Kearney, where she was tasked with mentoring talented players like Nashiya Branch and Yumyah Hargrove.

All of the experience and talent on Vance County’s women’s basketball roster culminated into a stellar inaugural season that saw the program finish by claiming regular season and conference tournament championships. Vance County finished with a 22-7 record after losing to Farmville Central in the third round of the NCHSAA 2A Tournament.

Pettaway said that a key component of Vance County’s efficient 2018-19 season was the dedication the coaches and players put into making everyone better. She intends to implement a similar philosophy at Crossroads that she hopes will yield immediate results.

“I’m a little aggressive,” Pettaway said. “I have this fire and I can be really intense but at the same time, I’m very nurturing. I want the girls to understand their role on the team and to know what they are capable of doing. They also need to have high expectations for themselves.”

Pettaway’s determination is one of the main reasons why Richardson believes she is a perfect candidate to lead the Crossroads varsity women’s basketball team into what he hopes will be their most successful decade.

“I couldn’t be more excited,” Richardson said. “Adrine brings experience as someone who has played and coached here locally. Our big push this offseason has been looking at our program and seeing where we need to enhance it and Adrine brings organization and professionalism to the girls program.”

Efficiency is something that Richardson has tried to establish with the Crossroads women’s basketball team since arriving at the school in 2018, as the program’s most recent victory occurred against Southside Christian on Jan. 16, 2020.

While Richardson knows that it will take patience to build up the varsity women’s team, he enters the 2021-22 season with optimism since Pettaway will be working with several players from the middle school team, which went undefeated during the previous year.

Richardson is not expecting anything to come easy for Pettaway or her players while competing inside the NCISAAA Mid-Carolina Conference but he said he is confident that the women’s varsity team can have one of their best seasons in history with the leadership and talent on the roster.

“We play in a very tough conference,” Richardson said. “Our expectations are to have attainable goals but all of our coaches want to win championships. I wouldn’t hire a coach that didn’t want to do that and Adrine has a good group to work with.”

Pettaway plans to work closely with her players Richardson and outgoing interim head coach Cammy Simmons over the next few months to ensure that the women’s basketball team will be ready to contend for wins from the opening tip off.

“We’re looking for some wins,” Pettaway said. “I want to turn this team around and having some of the girls from that great middle school team definitely helps. With the help of [Scottie and Cammy] I know that we have to have a successful year.”

Pettaway’s first game as the head coach of the varsity women’s basketball team at Crossroads is set to take place in the middle of November.

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