![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/481870506_18484951738023035_3397584557882266030_n.jpg\")
Lily Kluttz<\/p>\nHigh school girls basketball: Mustangs lost a ton, but Evans expects to compete<\/p>\n
Published 1:32 am Wednesday, July 23, 2025<\/p>\n
Lily Kluttz<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
By Mike London<\/p>\n
Salisbury Post<\/p>\n
GRANITE QUARRY \u2014 Brice Evans, a healthy, happy baby boy, arrived in late May, so East Rowan head girls basketball coach Bri Evans\u2019 life has changed quite a bit this summer.<\/p>\n
Brice Evans has roughly a 99 percent chance of being a super athlete 16 years from now, as mom was one of the best guards in Catawba College women\u2019s basketball\u00a0 history, while dad Trey, was one of the best linebackers the Indians ever had.<\/p>\n
Bri joked that Brice, who is 2 months old now, would be helping with her husband\u2019s football camp this week. No scholarship offers for Brice have been reported for young Brice so far, but it\u2019s probably just a matter of time.<\/p>\n
As far as East\u2019s girls basketball team, Evans has regained some of her quickness after childbirth, and she\u2019ll be ready for her fifth season in November. While she has a new priority, basketball is still really important to her.<\/p>\n
Evans and her husband worked with practically a brand new group 0f girls this summer, as\u00a0 most of the familiar names who made East such a solid and fun to watch team in 2024-25 will soon be college freshman. Rowan County Girls Basketball Player of the Year Mary Church will be playing for Meredith College. Rowan County Female Athlete of the Year Sadie Featherstone will be competing in track and field for NC State University. Isis Smith, Savannah Wise and Kady Collins will be making the short drive to help Pfeiffer University athletics, and the Mustangs subtracted several more basketball girls, including Kori Miller, a smart player who was usually a starter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t be sad about those girls graduating,\u201d Evans said. \u201cThat was a special group of girls and we\u2019ll miss them, but one of the things you hope to do as a high school coach is to help kids get to the next level, and five members of last year\u2019s basketball team are getting a chance to play a sport in college. They won\u2019t all be college basketball players, but high school basketball helped them get to where they are now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lily Kluttz will be the biggest name returning for the Mustangs. The rising senior point guard will have to do a lot for the Mustangs next season. She\u2019ll be the leader.<\/p>\n
Kluttz isn\u2019t tall, but she\u2019s an athlete. As East\u2019s shortstop, she was the Rowan County Player of the Year for softball.<\/p>\n
\u201cLily is really into softball, but she doubled up and was there for us this summer in basketball, as well as playing Legion softball,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe had regular workouts every week in June and we went over to North Meck\u2019s tournament and played against some good teams \u2014 South Iredell (coached by Evans\u2019 sister), Community School of Davidson, South Meck and North Meck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides Kluttz, East has returning players who got some experience last season such as Izzy Stepp, who was always one of the first Mustangs off the bench. Ava Alderman and KP Pfister also played some, but Evans isn\u2019t expecting any of last year\u2019s reserves to suddenly blossom into Mary Church.<\/p>\n
Evans is pleased with her group of newcomers to varsity ball, and that\u2019s good news. They\u2019ll have to help right away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll depend on a lot of new faces, but I think we\u2019re in better shape than we were four years ago when I was in my first year as head coach,\u201d Evans said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got our program in place. We\u2019ve got a foundation now, so we\u2019ve just got to fit the new pieces together. We lost a deep senior class, so it\u2019s going to be a totally new dynamic for us in some ways, but we\u2019re still going to work hard every day. We\u2019re still going to compete every game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"High school girls basketball: Mustangs lost a ton, but Evans expects to compete Published 1:32 am Wednesday, July…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-15224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}