Careers end for four Waren County seniors
MURFREESBORO — The buzzer at the end of overtime in Tuesday’s Region 4 tournament loss not only ended the Pioneers season, but also signaled the conclusion of the career of the team’s four seniors.
Matt Cotten, Jeff Chisam, Scott Dunham and Patrick Jones saw their high school playing days come to an end with Tuesday’s 65-62 loss, but while the end of their team’s run was tough to bear, the Pioneer seniors also feel they went out on a high note.
After notching just four wins in their sophomore year, the Pioneers — under the guidance of head coach Doug Keil — almost tripled that number with an 11-16 mark a season ago, then nearly doubled the 2000-2001 slate with a 21-11 campaign this year.
“It feels good,” Cotten said of looking back on this Pioneer squad’s accomplishments. “I think we’ve helped set a pretty good mindset going into next year.
“Nobody believed in us coming in at the start of this season, and we wanted to prove everybody wrong.”
Keil said the contributions of Cotten, Chisam, Dunham and Jones to the success of this year’s team, and hopefully future Pioneer squads, were immeasurable.
“You can’t say enough about what these seniors, and about what they’ve done for this program,” he said. “They’ve shown the way, and now they expect the underclassmen to carry the torch, if you will; to continue to build this program to get it to the level they ultimately want.”
Although their careers with the Pioneers have come to an end, Keil noted this year’s class, much like his first group of Pioneer seniors, will be hard to replace.
“The first group of seniors, once they learned what was expected of them, did an outstanding job and got us through the first step,” he said. “This year, we went through the next steps.
“They made it really take off, and went out and did what they wanted to achieve. They did an outstanding job, and I’m so proud of them.”
Cotten added that while he looks for good things from next year’s team, he hopes the idea of exceeding critics’ expectations continues to serve as an inspiration.
“I kind of liked being the underdog,” he said. “So maybe people won’t think too much of (the team) next year, and they can come in and prove them wrong again.”