Caleb Suggs

Hartselle Enquirer

The 2016-17 basketball season has come and gone and with it a renewed excitement in the city of Hartselle. The Hartselle Tigers finished the season strong and brought new life to a program that hadn’t experienced much success in a while. Now the Tigers are poised to prove that it wasn’t a fluke and that this is only just the beginning of bigger things to come. The player charged with leading the team there is senior Trace Hill.

Hill didn’t grow up in Hartselle, but made his way here from Falkville because of the opportunities it presented. “We came here because of the educational opportunities,” Hill said, “and also because if there was a chance of me going to college for basketball my parents thought I would get seen more at a place like Hartselle.” Hill’s freshman year happened to be Faron Key’s first year as coach at Hartselle. He knew right away that Key was going to bring the program back to prominence. “The first meeting we had with Coach Key I could tell he was going to change it,” Hill said. “He told everyone that if there was anybody that didn’t want to work as hard as they had to get the program turned around and then they should leave.”

It didn’t take long for Hill to catch the eye of his coach as he was moved to varsity halfway through his sophomore season. “All the teams were playing at Decatur that night and I was in his history class and he called me up to his desk and told me I was going to play varsity that night,” Hill said. “He told me that I wasn’t going to be pulled up to watch the game, that I was going to play.” It didn’t take long for Hill to catch the speed of varsity played as he achieved a starting role by his fifth game on the varsity. Hartselle stumbled through much of that season, but ended it strong with some quality performance, including a close game with the Austin Black Bears.

With every single starter returning of the next season, Hartselle prepared to be a much better team, although it didn’t get off to a great start. The Tigers suffered a second half meltdown in an opening game loss to the Athens Golden Eagles. “That was the first time ever after a game walked into the locker room at Hartselle feeling like we should’ve won the game,” Hill said. “Nobody was really down we were just mad. I think that game really flipped how we though about losing.” Hill and the Tigers would get their revenge almost a month later in one of the wildest games of the season. Hill led the Tigers with 30 points as Hartselle defeated Athens in 3OT, which included every starter but Hill fouling out of the game. “All of our starters fouled out except me and I’m thinking there’s no way were fixing to win this game,” Hill said, “I came out and scored the first five points and then our defense just stopped them after that.”

Despite that exciting win over Athens, the rest of the month of December was still tough on the Tigers. Hartselle suffered several heartbreaking losses to good teams including a three point overtime loss to Homewood who was the defending state champions. The Homewood loss was particularly hard for Hill as he broke his arm in that game, which put him out of action for several weeks. “We should’ve beat Homewood, which would’ve been a big win for us,” Hill said, “I broke my arm in the third quarter. When I shot my first three after I did it my whole arm went numb and it flew completely off target.”

Hill returned just in time to help the Tigers dominate the county tournament. “I got my cast off the day we beat Columbia but I still couldn’t play that game,” Hill said. “But I told my parents that I was playing in the county tournament no matter what.” Hartselle ended up winning their first county tournament since 2008, in convincing fashion, and went on an 11 game winning streak that concluded with a comeback win over Columbia after being down 26-9 to keep their postseason run alive. “We couldn’t hit a shot and at halftime we were just like this can’t be how it ends.” Hill said. “We starting hitting shots left and right in the second half and I remember when we took the lead thinking that we were going to win this game.”

Unfortunately for the Tigers, their season came to an end in sub regionals to the Muscle Shoals Trojans in a very tightly contested game. “We were ready for Muscle Shoals. We thought that we matched up well with them because we were pretty much the same team,” Hill said, “that was the worst night ever.” Hartselle fell 51-50 as their go ahead shot bounced out of the basket with a second left. “I feel like if we had got beat by 20 it wouldn’t have been as bad as losing by 1 at the buzzer,” Hill said, “I couldn’t imagine that being my last high school game.”

That loss kept Hartselle from advancing to Wallace State for the first time since 2003. Now Hartselle is preparing to make that next step this year. “We feel like were going to be really good this year,” Hill said, “we’ve had a good summer and were just ready to get the season started.”