By Jason McDaniel
Chronicle correspondent

Kingwood Park was third in its old district last season, and the two teams ahead of it — Barbers Hill and Crosby — now are in a different district, essentially replaced by two first-year varsity teams.

That means the Lady Panthers are set to dominate the new District 18-4A and enjoy their best season to date, right?

Not so fast says fourth-year coach Tammy White, who won’t go that far yet.

“On any given night anybody can be beaten and you have to show up ready to play,” White said.
White did concede the district will be far different than the old 19-4A, with its resident 4A powerhouse in Mont Belvieu.

Summer Creek and Porter are expansion schools in their inaugural year, and Willis, Huntsville, Caney Creek, New Caney and Humble all finished at the bottom of their respective districts last year.

New Caney and Humble both are moving down from Class 5A, which should make them more competitive in their new classification, but the Lady Panthers clearly are the cream of the crop on paper.

“It’s definitely going to be a completely new district but we’ve scheduled a really tough pre-district schedule and we’ll just see what happens,” White said.

“You’ve got another mixture of all different levels of play, and the new schools — Summer Creek, Porter — we haven’t seen play, so we’ll do what we can, and then becoming more competitive in our pre-district will be what helps us.”

A tough pre-district schedule will help prepare Kingwood Park for a deep playoff run regardless of what happens in district, and taking things a step further in the postseason is the ultimate goal.

“It was a tough district (last year) and I was pleased with our growth” White said. “We lost to Port Neches-Groves in the first round the year before and then last year we beat Port Neches-Groves in bi-district and advanced to area, so every year being able to take it to the next level in the playoffs is always exciting.”

These Lady Panthers will have to get there without three key players who graduated: setters McKenzie Pieper and Sydney Overhoff and outside hitter Caleigh Koshnick, but White says they’re ready.

“Those are big holes to fill but I’m confident the players we have coming up will be able to fill those shoes,” White said.

It helps that she has eight seniors on the roster, making for high expectations this season. There are nine total players back from last year and all played key minutes.

Senior libero Nausheen Merchant leads the group. The team captain was the 19-4A defensive player of the year the last two seasons.

“She’s very fundamentally sound,” White said. “She can read the ball well and she has extremely good work ethic.”

Junior middle blocker Emily Salter also returns, along with senior outside hitter Allie Uhrenholdt and athletic junior OH Jazmyn Johnson, the 19-4A newcomer of the year last year, who form the cornerstone of the Lady Panthers’ offensive attack.

But even with Johnson and Uhrenholdt holding down the offense, White says the strength of this season’s team might end up being defense, where they’re very sound.

That means they key to any success the Lady Panthers enjoy may come down to how well they incorporate their two new setters: senior Yolando Vargas, a varsity backup last year, and junior Ashleigh Overhoff.

“I have two new setters so that we’ll change our look a little bit,” White said. “And I lost three players who were big for us, but I hope to be quicker offensively.”

Kingwood Park scrimmages Aug. 6 at Tarkington and Aug. 7 at home with Klein Forest and Huffman Hargrave. The season opens with an old district foe, Barbers Hill, on Aug. 10 on the road.

“It’s always fun to come back from the summer break but our girls have been playing together in summer league,” White said. “They’re doing speed and conditioning camp, so I’m ready to start putting it all together.

“We’ll start with the obvious, conditioning and all that, but we’re going to hit the floor running.”