photo by: Richard Gwin

Lawrence High's girls basketball team runs through a drill during camp on Friday, June 3, 2016, at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

Before Lawrence High’s girls basketball players wrapped up their four-day team camp Friday morning at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, coach Jeff Dickson didn’t want them leaving the gymnasium without reminding them about the program’s soaring expectations.

The Lions, he told the attentive group, should be one of the state’s top teams next season. Not only is reaching the 2017 Class 6A state tournament an attainable objective, Dickson wants his players prepared to go after the first LHS championship since 2008.

“We’re Lawrence High,” Dickson proclaimed. “I mean, that’s what we do.”

Coming off a 12-10 season, this summer marks the beginning of a leap toward something greater, according to Dickson. The coach has an athletic wing in junior-to-be E’lease Stafford, a powerful post presence in sophomore Chisom Ajekwu, senior leadership in Skylar Drum, Olivia Lemus and Madison McKinney, as well as improving players in junior Talima Harjo and sophomores Hannah Stewart and Sammy Williams — all eager to follow his lead.

“We go at it,” Dickson said of Lawrence’s June regime, which cranked up Tuesday, the first possible day allowed by KSHSAA.

Already the Lions have gone through four 31?2-hour camp sessions and played in a pair of summer-league games. Next week, they’ll travel to the University of Arkansas team camp, with camps at Wichita State and Emporia State to follow before month’s end.

Drum thinks LHS already has accomplished much in the first week of a significant offseason.

“We’ve been working on jelling as a team, and we’re already ahead of where we were last year in the summer, so we’re proud of that,” the senior guard said.

Playing without last season’s leading scorer, Stafford, recovering from a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee, the Lions defeated Shawnee Mission North and lost by a point to Shawnee Mission Northwest on Tuesday.

McKinney saw one of the biggest positives of the week emerge in the setback.

“We have stuck together,” the senior reserve guard said. “So even if we were down by a lot, we didn’t have bad attitudes. We kept our heads high, and that really kind of helped bring us back into the game we were losing in.”

Little things like that make Dickson think he is working with the best LHS girls team in quite some time. Entering his third season with the Lions, Dickson pointed to the players’ commitment and chemistry as major factors in the program’s development.

“Their expectations have grown. Their concept of what they’re capable of has grown,” Dickson said, “and they’re starting to see themselves the way that I see them, which is, there’s not anything that they can’t do.”

The passionate coach has a not-so-subtle way of reminding his players of their potential. On some occasions, Dickson brings out Lawrence’s 2008 state championship trophy for the players to examine.

Lemus called winning another one a priority.

“We just want our picture on that trophy as well,” Lemus said. “It’s just a good visual of what our past team has done and what we want to be able to do.”