Father, daughter lead Lady Eagles

It’s a special thing when you get your first head coaching job.

It’s even more special when that job allows you to coach your daughter in her senior year of high school.

That’s the position new Oak Mountain girls varsity basketball coach Allen McGowan finds himself in.

“I’m really excited,” McGowan said. “I feel blessed to be able to coach Christian her senior year.”

Christian McGowan is the team’s leading returning scorer at around 11 points per gamer and is the team’s point guard.

“She shoots the 3 really well, sees the court and is a great leader,” her coach said. “She understands what we’re doing and does a good job of getting us into our offense.”

She’s one of five seniors returning from last year’s team and three returning starters, plus a couple of more players who started at times.

Madison Pierce is a solid rebounder who can also score in the post. Amber Johnson, another post player, missed most of last season with a torn ACL, but she seems fully healed and McGowan expects her to have a big season.

“Christian and Madison really complement each other,” McGowan said.

There are also some youngsters stepping up. McGowan said he is looking forward to working again with so many of the athletes he coached at the middle school. He thinks his team will have depth eventually as the newcomers blend in with the veterans.

Overall, he thinks the offense will be more balanced inside and outside, and that his team should be a pretty good shooting team.

“Our goal is to hopefully get better as we go through the season. The longer we’re together the better we’ll be.

“The girls are very good girls, and they’ve worked so hard. They’ve made improvement through our strength and conditioning program. They’ve worked so hard in preseason, and it’s carried over to the first practices.

The Lady Eagles are in a tough area in 7A with Hoover, Tuscaloosa County and Thompson. McGowan doesn’t want to put a goal of number of wins as he and his team work together for the first year. He wants to se improvement from game to game and see what happens come area tournament time.

“I hope that we’re really competitive. I think we’ll shoot it pretty well and be balanced and guard well.”