Take away one pillar of any foundation, and the remaining pillars are left bearing the weight.
So what happens when you take away three?
Clever has a remaining pillar more than capable of handling the load.
“I said ‘I need you to be averaging in the mid 20’s and she said ‘really?’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, can you do that?’ and she’s like ‘yeah.’,” said Clever Head Coach Dan Jones.
That’s the conversation Jones had with his senior point guard Allie Clevenger back in the summer.
Allie is backing up her answer in a big way, averaging more than 25 points per game.
“Any time you’ve got a player like that you look a lot better as a coach.,” Jones said.
Having Allie is one big reason for Clever’s success this year, despite losing three key seniors including all-state guard Harper Little player from last year’s team.
“I feel like I’ve been working on my leadership skills,” Allie said. “Talking to the girls, telling them where to go.”
That leadership has helped with three sophomore starting for the Lady Jays.
Clever already has 11 wins, including victories over class five schools Nixa and Lebanon this year.
“It gives us a bunch of confidence to say we can beat the Nixa’s, we can beat those higher classes. We might just be a small town in Clever, but I feel like we can compete with those bigger schools,” Allie said.
With those wins, and Allie running the point, the Lady Jays have proven they compete with just about anybody.
Just last week, playing without the team’s starting center, Allie went for a career-high 41 points in a Lady Jays win.
“We know what we’re capable of doing, and we want to go out and have fun and we’ve been successful so far,” Allie said.
She followed that by surpassing 1,500 career points in her next game.
Surprising? Not to Coach Jones.
“I’ve always known this kind of game was in her to kind of take over and take charge,” Jones said.
With number 10 leading the way, there’s plenty left to accomplish
“We’ve talked about it and talked about it and now we just really to make it happen so it would be awesome to send her out with a deep playoff run,” Jones said.
For her leadership, and elite scoring ability, Allie Clevenger is this week’s Athlete of the Week.
