Lady Rattlers look for first district win against Judson

It’s been a tough start for the San Marcos girls basketball team as they look to nab their first district win of the season.

Despite their record, it is all good thoughts for head coach Jermaine Ervin’s team.

“The girls are amazingly still focused on the task at hand,” Ervin said. “They are still engaged, and trying to find that next step to come out with a win. We are positive over here despite dealing with injuries.”

The Lady Rattlers have been plagued with a number of close defeats with an 11-point loss to East Central, and two five-point losses to both Schertz Clemens and Cibolo Steele. Though it has been a difficult stretch, the level of effort and play is not the reason for the losses.

“The girls are playing well,” Ervin said. “It’s just we are playing about four minutes of bad moments or tough basketball where we just turn the ball over or we don’t defend as strong as we have been. This is a young group and they are hungry. They want to win and they are trying to figure out how to do that.”

Because of the young players playing for San Marcos, the Lady Rattlers are still in the process of learning to play at the high school level.

“The biggest thing for us is that the margin of error is really small,” Ervin said. “The thing that I have to remember as a coach is that we have a lot of underclassmen who are handling the ball a lot and my seniors are posts and forwards. In those moments we are learning how to handle them through success and failure which has been failure leading to success later on…the biggest thing that has helped us is practice. We’ve been hammering it in over and over again while putting people in places where everyone knows where they are supposed to be.”

Another challenge the Lady Rattlers have faced is adjusting their game to the varsity level after playing at the junior high level.

“The biggest thing for those underclassmen is that they were bigger, faster, stronger than anybody else in middle school,” Ervin said. “Now they are playing at the high school level where the girls are 17-18 years old. So now their strengths are now even out on the court. We are working on skilling our girls up and giving them knowledge about the game… everyone is just frustrated at the moment and they want to be better. They are trying to do this in hostile environments.”

San Marcos’ effort haven’t gone unnoticed however as several opposing coaches have complemented the level of effort and talent the team has.

Though it is telling that the Lady Rattlers are making strides in their progress, San Marcos still has its main objective in the forefront of its mind.

“It tells me that we are going at the right pace and direction,” Ervin said. “Of course we want to be winning, don’t get it twisted. I feel like these girls want to win more than they want to breathe. But as my old basketball coach has told me, you have to learn to deserve to win. We are trying to do the things that we have to learn in order to win because these girls are making such a jump.”

San Marcos returns home Friday as the Lady Rattlers square off with Converse Judson at 7 p.m. inside the Snake Pit.