WARTRACE, Tenn. – As Janie Demonbreum wrapped up her third season patrolling the Cascade Lady Champions’ sideline with a heartbreaking 42-33 home loss to Summertown in the Region 5-AA Semifinal, she knew it was the final time that Sophie Ray, Kaydence Miller, and Laina Carter would be donning a Cascade uniform. 

Fast forward nearly three months to May 29th, and Demonbreum was finally able to hold tryouts for the summer preceding the 2025-26 season. Due to school getting out so much later than usual, this meant her Lady Champions would lose an entire week of practice compared to previous summers before they began their camp schedule with a one-day trip to Richland on June 6th. This was followed by a four-day, 14-game (combined varsity and JV) affair in Wayne County on June 8-11, and then concluded with a trip to Ravenwood on June 17th. 

“In my first year, I heavily focused on practice,” Demonbreum explained. I had to implement so many things, but now that I’m going into Year 4, everybody on this team – with the exception of two – I’ve coached whether it was in elementary basketball or for the last four years. If I had to go back to Year 1 I’d do the same thing. I think it’s so important for first-year coaches to spend more of their summer putting in the things they need to put in in order to get a jumpstart for the fall.”

“This year, though, I was more for hey, let’s go play, let’s see what we have, let’s see how everybody reacts because we lost a huge portion of our team.”

Coming into June, she knew for sure she had to replace three graduates – career 1,000-point scorer Sophie Ray, fellow starter Kaydence Miller who had become instrumental in playing the five, and another rotational piece in Laina Carter. Of course, Coach JD wishes she had more practice time to implement things with underclassmen, but she feels the 6 sophomores had enough experience from last season to where the lack of summer practice didn’t impact them “too much.” Lots of her girls play soccer or volleyball, so she holds her own practices at 6:00 a.m. in the summer to enable those girls to also practice with their respective upcoming fall sport.

Following the May tryout, Demonbreum announced the addition of four new players to the squad. Shalen Burt, a senior transfer student who came to Cascade from Rockvale before her junior year, along with three other freshmen. 

“[Burt] plays softball; she’s a natural athlete, and I felt like she needed to be a part of something besides softball,” Demonbreum said. “My senior year, it was big to have an outlet with a sport that I didn’t have as much pressure in as basketball, so I played softball. I feel like it’s a great opportunity for her to relax going into her senior year. She’s a great kid and works hard, and she got a few varsity minutes for us.”

Once the camp days began, Demonbreum began to see the growth from her young team. Kaegan Young and Suzanna Crews return to what will be the expected starting lineup along with junior guard Caroline Parker and Lizzie Keele after Crews missed pretty much all of last season recovering from a torn ACL. However, having these four experienced returners did not mean everything went swimmingly on the first day.

“After losing last year’s seniors, I didn’t really know what the dynamic of our team would look like” Demonbreum said, “I’ll tell you, that first day of practice, I walked out of practice and told my husband that it feels like we’re back at Year 1 because we are so young, but he quickly reminded me that we are so far ahead of Year 1, and that’s the truth. To know what we had to replace, but to know the type of girls that I have with their grit and tenacity and their want-to, they won’t want to let the Class of 2025’s seniors down. It’s going to be hard, we’re going to be young and small, but to know what I have to replace what we lost, I feel good. I feel a lot different than after the first day of summer practice, that’s for sure.”

A major part of why Coach JD feels a lot better about her team is the fact that they did eventually play live-action competition against other teams, starting at Richland on June 6th.

“I think we learned a lot about ourselves from the first day to the last,” she said. “When we played Richland – who returns all but two players from a state tournament team last year – on that first camp day, what we saw was that it was great to have Suzanna Crews back. Seeing not just her prowess on the perimeter, but her tenacity inside and being able to go get rebounds for us. Kaegan [Young] is still doing what Kaegan needs to do for our team, and Caroline [Parker] growing in her role…and Lizzie [Keele] I think is picking up exactly where she left off last season. She’s had a great, great spring with her travel team and has really focused on what she needs to do better scoring-wise and defensively to help our team continue to grow.”

Kaegan Young (22) is poised to help lead the Lady Champions in her final season at Cascade.

David Smith

“Another one who really shined was [sophomore guard] Lexi Comstock. It’s hard to replace Sophie Ray with her intensity, but then you look at Lexi and it’s like a little Sophie in a way. I feel like the twins, [sophomores] Makenzie and Makayla Fisher, had great days and shot the ball and rebounded well, and then [sophomore] Jade Toler…I’ve given her the green light where if she’s open she can go shoot it.”

However, the biggest eye-opener came when the Lady Champs traveled to Wayne County for 14 combined games in four days, all played without Kaegan Young. 

“Comparing the first and last days are pretty easy because we had our entire team on both of those days, but in Wayne County, we didn’t have Kaegan the entire time,” Demonbreum said, “When we were at Wayne County, that was a tough experience for us…we really got to see everybody contribute to team success. At first, I didn’t want to go to Wayne Co. without her, but then I thought about it for a little bit and decided that we have to figure out how to play without her. There was a game in the District Tournament last year where we had to figure out how to play without her for almost an entire half of the game, so I was really proud of Caroline Parker stepping up. We finally got her to take control of the point guard spot, and I think that really extends her game a lot because she can score, but she can also facilitate things. I mean, she really blossomed in Wayne Co. And then, just to see Suzanna’s leadership come back out because that was a huge piece we were missing last year. I think she learned a lot last year sitting on the bench with the coaching staff, and she was able to offer great wisdom to some of our younger girls. We have six sophomores, and all six potentially can have playing time on varsity. She was able to communicate with them about some of our expectations and the things that she saw that we as a coaching staff might not be able to explain in the best of ways.”

Overall, Cascade finished 12-2 at Wayne County, and then Young returned at Ravenwood for the final day of live action to complete the summer.

Even with how great Young has been for Cascade, the return of Suzanna Crews, along with the marked improvement of Lizzie Keele after playing big minutes as a freshman, as well as steps forward taken by players like Jocelyn Laughlin and the aforementioned Fisher twins, have all been exactly what Demonbreum had been looking for from her team coming into the summer.

Junior guard Caroline Parker (2) is set for her second season with Cascade in the backcourt with Kaegan Young.

David Smith

“[Having Suzanna back] is going to be huge,” said Demonbreum, “If we can keep her out of foul trouble and I can keep her on the court, then we’re in business. She cleans up the boards really well, she’s getting way more comfortable with her shot, and her leadership isn’t something you can just replace. We really missed that last year, but I really think we all made the best decision for Suzanna as a whole not to push it because it gave her time to build some more muscle.”

“It’s also been a privilege to watch Lizzie [Keele] this spring because her and my daughter are playing for the same travel program, so we were at a lot of the same tournaments,” she continued, “Getting Lizzie out of her comfort zone, it was the best thing for her. She wasn’t always successful, but it pushed her, and it made her learn more about her skills and how she can come back to us and contribute even more. When I think about Lizzie, though, I really think about Kaegan at the same time. When Kaegan came in her freshman year, as the year went on, people were having to adjust how they guarded her. Obviously she could score, but she wasn’t consistent enough and wasn’t as strong. Then in her sophomore year, she was the focus, and I think when you look at Lizzie you can say the same thing. Lizzie blossomed, I mean the second half of the season, she just took off. People are going to adjust how they guard her, but I don’t think Lizzie is going to back down. Those minutes she had last year were huge.”

“The Fisher twins kind of shocked us. They played with a lot more confidence this summer. They would step in for two minutes here, two minutes there, but would give us their all for those two minutes. They’d knock down threes, they would grab rebounds, they would make good box-outs…just things that we hadn’t seen from them last year, but it looked like their confidence came back this summer. Jocelyn Laughlin too, she gave us a boost inside. She’s strong, and she’s not afraid to get in there and bump around, but she also has a really good shot on the outside.”

Demonbreum will be entering her fourth year as the Lady Champs’ Head Coach, and this promises to be the program’s best chance to finish with a winning record since the 2018-19 season. She has also been knocking on the door of the state-sectional round for the last two years, nearly kicking down the door entirely before running out of gas down the stretch against Summertown this past season. Despite being moved into a district with Loretto and Summertown both, she is up for the competition.

“When you add Loretto and Summertown to our district, it makes it a gauntlet in 2A. Everybody has talked about it…but I think it prepares you for the later part of the season. We’re going to play in some tough environments, but I do think it’s an asset to our district. There’s no more cakewalks in district play.”

For what it’s worth, Cascade is set to host this upcoming season’s District Tournament, which should prove to be a benefit for the Lady Champs heading into regional play.

“It just so happened that Coach JD drew number one, and nobody was happy about that,” Demonbreum concluded with a laugh. 

Cascade’s schedule has not been released as of this print, but will begin sometime in mid-November.