WS Chronicle

Photo by Timothy Ramsey

BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY 

THE CHRONICLE

Many players look at their teammates as brothers when they step onto the court or field.  For Kade Jones and Shimmel Elam, they are brothers on and off the court.  The brothers are guards for the Junior Varsity basketball team at Winston-Salem Preparatory Academy.

Kade says he picked up the game of basketball as a child and has been playing ever since.  For Shimmel, he says he would play with his older brother and his friends and developed a love for the game.

The sophomores say they enjoy playing ball with one another on the team along with playing against one another in the driveway.  Each claims to be the better player but had high praise for one another’s game.

“I like playing on the same team because we have fun out there on the court,” said Elam.

Jones added, “We always have to see who’s better than who when it comes to us on the court. We try to out shoot and out score one another.

For Jones he says his best attribute on the court is his ability to drive the ball to the rim.  Elam thinks his passing ability is the best out of his arsenal.

Both players also acknowledged they have things they need to work on as they will be trying out for the Varsity team next season.  Jones said because of his height he knows he needs to work on his ball handling skills.  Elam also thinks his ball handling needs improvement but also thought he needed to work on aggressively taking the ball to the hoop.

Heading into next season both young men are hopeful for the prospect of playing on the varsity team. Jones said his coaches informed him that he needs to get into the weight room and get stronger to play on the next level.  Elam said he knows he will have to work harder because of the speed of the game at the varsity level.

Jones and Elam were pleased with their team’s overall performance this season although they said there was definitely room for improvement.  Even though the Phoenix did win their respective conference, the boys think they also should have won the Lash/Chronicle tournament as well.

Bridget Elam, Kade and Shimmel’s mother, said she enjoys watching both young men play ball because of the battles she has seen them have on their hoop in the driveway.

“Neither one of them played to the caliber that I know they can play at,” said Bridget Elam, who is an intern at The Chronicle. “They are both good players and I want them to show what they actually can do on the court.  I expect both of them to continue to excel in the classroom and let their athletic ability catch up and put the two together to get to college.”