Shannon Leads Mount Vernon Girls to Win

Youth is being served at Mount Vernon. The Majors have no seniors on the roster, but feature four sophomores who all played varsity last year, as well as four freshmen who are having an immediate impact this year.

That impact was felt tonight as Chanel Shannon scored 13 points and led Mount Vernon to a 59-45 win over Washington-Lee.

"We played well, but we did not play our type of defense tonight," said Mount Vernon Coach Courtney Coffer. "Of course we'll take the win any we can get it, but we're a lot better than what we showed tonight."

Coffer also praised the hustle, defense and rebounding of freshmen Samantha Porter, but expected better defensive rebounding from his team as a whole. The Majors had held three straight opponents to less than 40 points after a season-opening 66-56 win over Woodbridge.

"I think our girls were looking ahead to the Edison game on Tuesday," Coffer said. "I think they were overlooking this game, and Washington-Lee is a good team. They played us really hard. It was a dog fight until we got some space from them."

Though young in age, Mount Vernon is not lacking in experience. A dominant team in the National District for more than a decade, most of the Majors play year-round with AAU clubs, some with each other.

"When it comes to skill level and IQ, they're a little ahead of the game," said Coffer.

Coffer was ready to admit that there will be opponents with more experience, and cutting down on mistakes now will be crucial to how the Majors fare this year.

"We're going to have a lot of games like tonight where we make dumb mistakes and we don't do things that we normally do, and we just have to keep building off that," he said. "I'm not making any guarantees, but as long we keep working hard and control our own destiny, I think we'll be there at the end."