Bradley Central will induct two former players into the Bearette Hall of Fame between games pitting District 5-AAA rivals Bradley and McMinn County tonight at Jim Smiddy Arena.
Jody Adams and Sandra (Dixon) Shourd are the inductees.
A current Bearettes player, senior Brooke Copeland, is in line for another honor – she’s a candidate for the McDonald’s All-American Team. If selected for this year’s nationally televised games to be played at the United Center in Chicago in April, the University of Florida signee will be among the top players picked to fill rosters for 24 girls teams, according to the Cleveland Daily Banner.
Player selections will be announced on Jan. 29 at 6 p.m. on ESPNU.
Adams, daughter of former Bradley baseball coach Joe Adams, played at Bradley Central and then for Pat Summitt at Tennessee. She is currently the head women’s basketball coach at Wichita State and the Lady Shockers have a 13-2 record. She has coached the Lady Shockers for six years.
At Bradley from 1987-89, Adams scored a 2,478 career points and was an all-state pick all three seasons of varsity play. She earned all-America selections to Street & Smith, Converse and USA her senior season before signing with Tennessee, where she was a member of the Lady Vols’ 1991 national championship team.
Adams was a student assistant at Tennessee and had assistant positions at Auburn, Wake Forest, Minnesota, Missouri-Kansas City and Southern Illinois before landing her first head coaching job at Murray State in 2007.
Shourd played for the legendary Smiddy from 1968-71 when girls teams played the old six-on-six style of basketball. The Bearettes and Shourd won a state title in 1970.
Copeland, a 6-foot-2-inch post, earned all-state honors in basketball and volleyball as a junior, has put up double-double numbers the past two seasons. She has scored 1,900-plus points and led the Bearettes to a 103-16 record so far this season.
(E-mail Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com)