The table is set. Set of the Lady Blue Devils basketball season.
Where Winter Haven doesn’t have to settle for table scraps this year. They are the defending state champs and get to sit at the adult table.
“We all just looked around and we were like, we’re really state champs,” junior guard Diamond Battles. “So now we go on the wall, we get a banner and we’re not at the kiddie table.”
For nine years, Winter Haven’s girls basketball program endured a state title drought. That ended in February when the Lady Blue Devils topped Lakewood Ranch for the 7A championship.
The pressure’s on to do it all again. That’s why the team is putting in the hard work.
“We really have to practice harder,” Battles said. “We have to look for bigger things. We have to want more. We have to play harder, more defense, more intensity. It’s everything but 10 times more.
"So now we have a big target on our back because everybody wants to beat Winter Haven.”
“For us, it really doesn’t change because we want to win so bad every year,” head coach Johnnie Lawson said. “So we’re just as hungry as we were last year.”
Hungry to add another ring as back-to-back champions, something no Polk County team has ever done.
“So I can go from sitting at the kiddie table to the adult table to sitting at a table by myself,” Lawson said.
Someone once said, the fondest memories are made when gathered around the table.
The table setting is different for Winter Haven this season, but the Lady Blue Devils are hungry to create many more memories and toast another championship.