Up-and-coming girls’ basketball players at Lakeland High School recently answered the challenge posed by the King’s Fork High School Future League with a string of uninterrupted victories on the way to winning the championship.

The league featured five teams from area schools with rosters composed of rising eighth-, ninth- and 10th-graders.

Games were played at King’s Fork from May 22 to June 11, during which time the Lady Cavaliers went 6-0, defeating Deep Creek High School for the championship in the league’s concluding single-elimination tournament.

“I’m excited to see how they’ll take this and go on,” Lakeland coach Brandey Blunt said.

She said she had no doubt they would be competitive if they played the way she knew they were capable of playing. Some members of the eight-girl squad were key contributors on Lakeland’s 2013-14 junior varsity team that went 15-2.

Those leading the fight for Lakeland in the King’s Fork Future League included three rising freshmen, point guard Makayla Dickens, shooting guard Kayla Barnes and small forward Brianna Copeland, in addition to 6-foot-2-inch rising sophomore center Deja Freeman.

The Lady Cavaliers were also bolstered by the presence of rising sophomores Jayla Stewart and Jevedia Martin and rising freshmen Kaitlyn Robertson and Amari Mason.

“They have a hate-to-lose spirit about them as a team,” Blunt said of the Future League squad. “I think that’s just the hunger that they have for the game, and I just love watching them because they just have that kind of drive.”

They will have opportunities to exercise that drive again soon against upperclassmen in a summer league hosted by Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk starting on June 28.