Coach Joey Thacker’s Franklin County Flyers have won six of the last eight 11th Region girls’ basketball championships, including the last three in a row.

And even with the turnover that is the constant nature of high school sports, it should come as no surprise that Thacker’s peers believe Franklin County to be the top team in the 11th Region again this season.

The Flyers received 12 No. 1 votes out of the 14 cast by the region’s coaches in our @HLpreps preseason survey. Madison Southern got the other two. But Thacker knows no one’s ceding any trophies to his team just yet.

“Sometimes people put you at the top of the ladder because they’d like to kick the bottom of it out from under you,” Thacker joked.

Despite Madison Southern’s two No. 1 votes, Frederick Douglass is the coaches’ pick as the 11th’s second-best team.

“I like the chemistry this year with our girls. The energy’s different,” Douglass Coach Daryl Moberly said. “I think we all have the same goal. I’m expecting a productive season this year.”