Sun staff
Batavia High School girls varsity basketball coach and Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper Jason McElfresh is recovering well from injuries sustained in a Jan. 6 head-on crash.
“I’m good,” he said. “I continued to have headaches and it got really bad on Friday night, (Jan. 9). So, Saturday morning I went in and they did a CT scan on me and everything came back good.
“They’re diagnosing me right now with a pretty severe concussion and they want me to follow up with a neurologist. Other than that, everything’s good. Nothing’s broke. Just a little shaken up.”
Erika Singleton, 25 of Milford, was driving on U.S. 50 in Miami Township when she lost control of her vehicle and slid into the other lane, striking McElfresh’s cruiser head-on.
Singleton and two of her children, ages 6 and 22 months, were also taken to Bethesda North Hospital, but there were no serious injuries, patrol officials said.
As for McElfresh’s coaching duties, the Lady Bulldogs didn’t have any games between Jan. 3 and Jan. 12.
McElfresh said that while he wasn’t able to coach in practice last week, assistant coach Matt Lester ran things.
McElfresh was back on the bench on Jan. 12 for Batavia’s 36-30 win over Blanchester.
“I just (had) to calm down my ways a little bit, I guess,” McElfresh said. “I’ll be a little bit more relaxed.”
The Lady Bulldogs sit at 4-7 through 11 games. In their first trip through their new division — the Southern Buckeye Conference American — Batavia went 1-4, scoring their first league win of 2014-15 in an overtime win over Norwood on Dec. 15.
While the coach continues to recover, his team has been dealing with injuries as well.
“We’ve battled injuries,” he said. “We’ve had two broken feet, a torn ACL from July, which is one of our seniors. We’ve had a broken nose and a torn calf.”
Still a relatively young team, Batavia has been aided by the inclusion of sophomore Kaitlin Ricke, a Clinton-Massie transfer. Ricke, who the coach calls “the best female athlete that (he’s) been around,” is second on the team in scoring and first in rebounding.
McElfresh’s daughter, Samantha, is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 13.5 points per game. The senior guard currently has 835 points for her career and is on pace to eclipse the 1,000-point barrier before her career in green and white comes to a close.
Freshman Maggie Mehlman has also stepped in and contributed, averaging 7.0 points per game. Cati Hatfield, Alister Nickley, Carly Werring, Lexie Herbert, Manhattan Miller and Kamryn Artis are also contributing.
The coach said he’s hoping, as players come back from injury and get comfortable in the scheme, that the Lady Bulldogs will have a more productive second half of the season.
“We want to implement (the injured) players back into our offense and defense and get them playing with the girls who have been with us so far this season,” McElfresh said. “It’s like we’re getting three or four new players. They’ve done a good job of coming to practice while they were injured, but it’s far different being on the sidelines than it is being right in the middle of it.
“Once we get them acclimated, we’re hoping to be more competitive the second time around (the SBC-American).”
McElfresh and the Lady Bulldogs host former divisional rivals Bethel-Tate on Thursday, Jan. 15.