There have been great spells and dry spells in the history of the Haralson County High School boys basketball program.

When current Rebels coach Whitt Brown played on the team in the 1990s, Haralson County was a consistent winner on the hardcourt.

That hasn’t been the case over the past few years as the Rebels have combined for just 19 wins in Brown’s first three years at the helm.

The numbers have been frustrating for Brown in more places than just the win column and scoreboard.

“For some unknown reason, numbers-wise we’re losing numbers over the years,” said Brown, who graduated from Haralson County in 1995 and played alongside Bowdon coach Vic Coggins. “My first year, we had 25-30 kids in the program. Now we’re down to 15-20.”

Finding students who want to be basketball players at Haralson County has been a challenge for Brown, who has been left with little choice but to move forward with the players he does have.

Numbers-wise, Brown is short-handed this week at the Villa Rica Team Camp with half of his team away at a football camp.

“Finding continuity right now is kind of difficult,” Brown said. “It hasn’t been a great camp, but the kids who don’t normally play are playing a good deal of minutes, so I guess that’s one positive.”

The Rebels will be at full strength next week when they participate in the Temple Team Camp. Brown said that will probably be the only time all summer that the whole team will be together.

It will be a critical week for the Rebels, who lost six seniors, four of which were starters.

“We’re not necessarily very young, but we’re very inexperienced,” Brown said. “We run kind of an unconventional offense, so it’ll take a while for them to get the hang of it.”

The Rebels run a Princeton-style offense because they don’t traditionally have the athletes to play an up-tempo game.

Brown said his players are easy to coach, but they can’t match the size of the teams he played on at Haralson County.

“I think more than anything, I’ve developed a system where the kids understand from the JV to the varsity kind of what I want to run and how we want to run it,” Brown said. “I think our system is in, but the numbers right now, we’re always looking for basketball players.”

While it may not show on the scoreboard, Brown said he believes the Rebels took a step forward last season. Haralson County won its first five games, but went 2-18 the rest of the way.

Despite all the losses, Brown said Haralson County was competitive in most of its games, with eight of those losses being by 10 points or fewer.

“That was a step further than what we used to be, to be honest with you,” Brown said. “Maybe this year we’ll take another step and win some more.”