NATCHEZ — Gwyn Young spends a fair amount of time recruiting players from Natchez, and this marks the third straight year he’s signing someone from Natchez High School.

The women’s basketball coach at Copiah-Lincoln Community College inked Lady Bulldogs senior Ashley Minor Tuesday morning, following in the footsteps of Ricarla Shotwell last year and Keosha Bradley two years ago.

“There have always been good players at Natchez High,” Young said. “When we’re not getting good players from Natchez, you can tell the difference in what kind of team we’ve got.”

Young said he expects Minor to play both point and shooting guard, and he’s looking for her to be an outside shooting threat as she continues to develop that part of her game.

“We’re going to work on her outside shooting, because we need a three-point threat,” Young said. “I think she’s athletic enough to do that, and she plays good defense. She’s one of the top players in the area, for sure. We think she can contribute right away offensively and defensively.”

Minor said she’s glad to finally have signed with a school, but she said she’ll miss being in Natchez. The visit to Wesson three weeks ago sealed the deal for Minor, she said.

“There aren’t too many people, so I know I’ll be able to learn,” Minor said. “They have a great team, and they have friendly people there.”

Minor said she knew she wanted to keep playing basketball during her 11th grade year at NHS. She said it was being able to bond with her teammates that made her want to keep playing beyond high school, even if she’s getting a whole new set of teammates.

“We stayed playing ball together, and they just kept pushing me to work hard,” Minor said.

Minor said her strengths as a player are shooting and driving to the basket. She said she wanted to thank her coaches, teammates, her family and, most of all, God for helping her get to the next level.