Bridgeport Girls Basketball Looks Back on Season, Looks Ahead to New Campaign
By Michael Minnich on March 02, 2026
BRIDGEPORT – The season came to an end for the Bridgeport Indians girls basketball team with a 53-37 loss at the Elkins Tigers in the Class AAA Region II playoffs on Thursday night.
Yet coach Josh Ashby was still upbeat postgame, grateful for the contributions of his seniors, Reese Pierce, Delaney Dotson and Haylee Pryor, and excited for his underclassmen to be a year older and better for the 2026-27 campaign.
“I love these girls to death,” Ashby said of his seniors. “They left us a nice foundation. They’ve taught the young ones a lot...they were real team leaders for us.”
Bridgeport won six games, four against Big 10 foes North Marion, Robert C. Byrd, Preston and Elkins and two against teams that have been Class AAA state title contenders in recent years, Ripley and Sissonville, on a neutral floor at East Fairmont.
Pryor and Pierce were the top two scorers for Bridgeport on the season, but the next six are all back next year.
That returning group is led by sophomores Olivia Bell (5.6 points per game) and Avery Humble (4.8 points and a team-best 6.2 rebounds per game).
Juniors Audrey Kerr and Mahaylee Messenger and freshman Aria Selario also were integral parts of the Tribe’s rotation.
Plus, Bridgeport Middle is coming off of a runner-up finish in the Mid Mountain 10 Conference Championships, so the feeder system is strong.
“Hopefully, (the underclassmen learned) how to work pretty hard,” Ashby said. “There’s a bright future with these young ones...hopefully, these seniors will still be around that these girls can lean on them and talk and call and bounce some ideas off of them.”
Ashby says this senior group may not be done with the program, either.
“Hopefully, in a couple of years, maybe these girls will be on our coaching staff. That’s all good for me,” Ashby said.
Bridgeport closed that Elkins playoff game on an 11-0 run when it would have been easy to give up.
Ashby said the message in the huddle was “to keep battling. We wanted to play to the final whistle. We wanted our seniors to instill in the younger ones that, hey, we play the final whistle no matter what, whether it's a one-point ball game or whether it's a 50-point ball game.”
Retaining that mentality will be essential as Bridgeport looks to take its next steps forward.
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