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By Frank A. Davis and Titus Mohler

Franklin High School’s varsity girls basketball team struggled Tuesday, Dec. 3, in its second game of a four-game opening week.

The Lady Broncos hosted Lakeland High School on Dec. 3 and fell 71-17.

Kelvin Hayes, who is in his first year as Franklin’s head coach, said the Lady Broncos are a relatively new squad this season, as the roster does not feature many girls who have played basketball previously.

“They all have come out and wanted to play and participate,” he said. “I think that tonight they gave a very good effort. I have seen improvement from one game to the next. We played a game last night, Dec. 2, against Western Branch, and we turned around and played again tonight, Dec. 3, and we look much better than we did last night. We improved, and this is a building stage for basketball.”

Junior guard Zariah Mitchell led Franklin with 10 points against Lakeland.

Hayes noted that the Lady Broncos’ roster features no seniors this year.

“I have three freshmen, and two of them are starters,” he said. “So, we are young and rebuilding, and I think that we are off to a good start with minimum practice, because we have four games this week. We have not established a team chemistry yet, and I hope that will be sometime in January.”

Franklin has a few more opportunities in December to work toward that chemistry, with the week of Dec. 8-14 being a three-game week and the week of Dec. 15-21 being a two-game week before the holiday break.