By KYLE LUTZ

CAMERON — Although the Cameron girls’ basketball team fell one game short of its goal from the start of the season, there are a few silver linings that can be drawn.

The goal is to make it to Charleston. The Dragons fell to Ritchie County, 47-42, in a regional final game. However, that’s as far a Cameron team has been. Another silver lining, the Dragons bring back all their starters and lettermen from last year’s squad. With that being said, all hands are on deck.

“We got our starting five back,” Cameron coach Roger Cain said. “And we have some girls that are coming back from off the bench and have some other girls that are coming up that are freshmen that we’re looking for to contribute and help us achieve those goals this year. All-in-all, it’s the most that we are returning in a long time and fortunately, it’s a team that made it that far last year. Especially the senior group, they’ve had this goal since Day 1 to get to Charleston. They’ve worked really hard and trying to achieve those dreams. We’re going to give it a run this year and see where the chips may fall.

“We’re hoping with the support we have with some of the underclassmen and the freshmen coming up, we’re able to achieve those goals this year.”

Seniors Autumn Gossett, Peri Gray, Kelsie Meintel and Courtney Walker — all starters from last year — will also be looked upon to bring leadership to this team. And with good reason, Walker and Meintel have been starting since they were freshmen while Grey and Gossett are three-year starters. The lone junior, Jordyn Hughes is the other starter.

“They have a lot of experience under their belt,” Cain said. “They definitely brought a lot of leadership in the past and they are definitely bringing it this year, which really helps when you have a young core coming in as freshmen and they’ve done an excellent job working with them so far.”

There are six freshmen coming in. Cain says that a handful of them could see some quality playing time and get some varsity minutes under their belt during their first year including Kori Scott, Lili Neely, Madge Lucey and Emma Whipkey. The other freshmen are Reagan Gray and Maddie Sleeth.

Some sophomores that have seen some varsity minutes are Maelyn Canada and Kendra Dobbs, who lettered at Bishop Donahue last season. Alice Jones, Stephanie Starcher and Jordan Dotson round out the sophomore class.

While it looks to be an exciting year for the Dragons team-wise, they will also have an exciting road trip around the holidays as they will be traveling to Florida to compete in the Sunshine Classic from Dec. 27-30. Cain got an invite from the organization and while he looked at a couple other competitions in Daytona Beach, Fla., they chose the Sunshine Classic.

“We should see a lot of tough competition down there,” Cain said. “We don’t really know who these teams are, they don’t know who we are. We’re just going to go down and see where we stand with some of the other teams in the country.

“The girls were really interested in trying to do something over the holiday break. We had a lot of fundraisers over the past year and our community has really help a lot . A lot of thanks to them and the local businesses and our parents and our local community have really helped support us getting down there. Our girls are really excited about it and they worked really hard trying the funds raised and they made it happen.”

Cain and the Dragons start their season when they travel to Hundred on Dec. 1.

“The goal for us, we stated Day 1 at practice is just to get better every day,” Cain said. “We’re not only looking to get to Charleston, but we’re hoping to qualify for the OVACs and see what we can do there. Hopefully win an OVAC championship. We haven’t hung a banner for that for a while. We’re in the Mason-Dixon Conference, we’re hoping to win that conference, which we haven’t done in a while. We’re in the West Virginia HIT tournament, and we’re looking to see if we can possibly win that this year.”

Cain is assisted by Mark Witzberger and Michael Juliano.