Just like every other season that begins, Red Level girls basketball coach Delores Douglas just wants her team to do better than the previous season.

“You hope to do better,” Douglas said.

The Lady Tigers will have three seniors in Kim Perdue, Lakeshia Harris and A.J. Grooms returning to the team this season. RLS will have three returning starters on the team.

Red Level will be without standout player Lania Paulk, who is now a freshman at Judson College playing basketball.

Douglas said there are a couple girls that are stepping up to fill in for Paulk on the inside.

The Lady Tigers will be competing in Class 2A, Area 2 with Elba, New Brockton, Samson and Zion Chapel.

Douglas said the competition will be just about the same as it was last year, where her team played in Class 2A, Area 1 with Excel, Flomaton and Mobile Christian.

“For some people — and some coaches — when you change areas you may think it’s for the better, but I think it’ll be probably the same as far as competition wise that we’ve had in the past,” she said. “We’ll get to see some of our area teams play because Elba’s in that Straughn (Thanksgiving) tournament. With Elba, they’ll be a pretty tough team. Plus, they gained two, the Hammonds (Heather and Brooke) from Florala.”

Douglas said the key goal this season for her team is to “improve” every day.

“Our goal is to take it day by day, practice by practice and game by game,” Douglas said. “I told them at the first day of practice, ‘if we don’t go into each practice and improve on something and there’s no improvement, then we’ve come for nothing.’

“We have to come in and improve day by day or improve from the previous day’s work,” she said.

Red Level will hit the road this friday night in its season opener against Opp. The girls start after the B-team, which begins at 4:30 p.m.