The 740 Thunder AAU girls basketball team won the Magenta Silver division championship during the Run 4 The Roses Classic held last month inside the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville. Pictured from left to right are assistant coach Sydney Reynolds, Makaela Bandy (2), Larissa McDaniel (4), Gracie Lively (14), Haley Alloway (32), Audry Clingenpeel (30), Ellie Kennison (5), Quinn Bunch (3) and head coach Jay Reynolds. (Courtesy photo)

PARKERSBURG — The 740 Thunder, an area AAU basketball team, had a solid summer they capped with the Magenta Silver division championship last month during the Run 4 The Roses Classic held inside the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville.

“It is one of the most prestigious grassroots tournaments maybe in the world, definitely the United States,” admitted 740 Thunder head coach Jay Reynolds.

“There was over 2,700 teams there from 50 states and nine countries. I think they had over 100 courts this year.”

The 740 Thunder had to play in the 2025 division since they had three seniors on the roster in Belpre’s Haley Alloway and Larissa McDaniel along with Federal Hocking’s Audry Clingenpeel.

Parkersburg junior Gracie Lively was the only class of 2026 player, while in Louisville the rest of the roster consisted of sophomores Quinn Bunch and Makaela Bandy from Williamstown as well as Big Red Ellie Kinnison.

“At the beginning of travel season the only one I kind of knew was Ellie,” admitted Bunch, who was the starting point guard for the Yellowjackets. “We had trained at the Elite (Sports Center) together.”

The 740 Thunder lost one game in overtime during pool play before making the run to the title in the bracketed tournament.

“It was really fun just because it’s so many people from all over, different countries, and there’s like a lot of different competition there,” Bunch added. “It was good for me to go against that competition of defenders.

“I had to get more shots off faster since they were long and bigger. The competition we went against helped me a lot. It helped me be a leader on the court.”

McDaniel, who spent her first two years at Federal Hocking and last season at PHS, admitted things went really well.

“That whole weekend was so crazy,” said McDaniel, who helped her team to a 50-38 championship game victory against CBA Gunning from Connecticut. “At first we were up by a lot and we let them come back a little, but we ended up beating them by a good amount.”

Not including a prep tournament for the Louisville trip, the 740 Thunder finished the summer 17-14.

“At first, a lot of them were young, we just had to get used to each other and stuff,” McDaniel said of coming together.

“Toward like the end we got really close and we were hanging out a lot. The more we hung out and stuff the more comfortable we became on the court.”

Current Williamstown assistant Beth Reck was unable to coach the 740 Thunder for a 12th season, but said herself and Michelle Alloway put the team together and designed their uniforms.

“I’ve coached for a lot of years and I’ve coached at the high school level and taking this AAU deal this year, Beth called me,” explained coach Reynolds. “She was unable to because West Virginia rules don’t allow high school coaches to coach AAU for some unknown reason. We talked it out and I decided to coach.

“My daughter (Sydney) has played with the 740 and she was in from college. She’s playing at Muskingum. She was in and was able to help me a little bit and my wife does the book. Beth said I think I’ve got enough kids. Some of them left when they heard I wasn’t going to coach. It ended up we had eight girls.”

Marietta High sophomore Kenadee Strauss didn’t compete in Louisville.

Alloway, who is competing for the Golden Eagles in volleyball before her final year on the hardwood, admitted the run to the championship was something else.

“We all went in there thinking we weren’t going to win,” Alloway said. “Game by game we started having fun and playing like a good basketball team. It came out of nowhere. We were all surprised with ourselves.

“We won the biggest game. We’re a really young team, not me and the other two seniors, but we are a really young team. It was rough at first and then we started to learn how we all play and it definitely came together at the end.”

Like Bunch, Alloway also felt the experience was invaluable.

“You learn new stuff,” said the Golden Eagle. “Basically playing against good competition from all around, you learn a lot of stuff to take back to Belpre and use it.”

All in all, Reynolds was content with the effort of his players throughout the summer.

“We had a very good season,” said the coach. “We were hammering fundamentals and learn some offense. I was not going to coach them too hard. It’s AAU. I’m pretty structured. I tried to deviate from my norm and not be quite as structured and still give them an opportunity to be competitive. As it ended up this team exceeded any of my expectations. We were playing with all these freshmen in a high school bracket.

“We kind of hammered it out and got better each outing. When we went to Kentucky they were just really focused and we came together and played the best basketball of the season down there. We played some pretty good teams. We played some teams that had some D1 commits. The girls bought into playing good team basketball. We set good screens and we played solid defense. We just did fundamental basketball and it got us a lot of wins that way.”

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com