Final Shot for Boys and Girls Basketball

As our girls and boys basketball seasons come to a close, I was able to catch up with some members of the two teams to talk about how they felt their season went. As of February 18th, the boys’ Freshman team has a record of 4 wins and 11 losses; the JV team is currently 5-9, and the varsity is 3-15. The girls’ JV team is 10-9 and the varsity team has an even 12-12 record.

When asked about the boys teams’ improvement, Freshman Drew Iddings mentioned that “our teamwork has really improved; we struggled throughout the season, but we’ve really done well at coming together and pushing through our struggles”. Iddings also stated that “we have had a lot of obstacles this season, but some of our better players moved up to play with the JV team, and that was tough to keep them in the know of what our plans were.” Iddings, when asked what his best memory was of the season, said “our first win of the season was my favorite memory for a number of reasons; we played great as a team and beat the other team by a lot!” During that game, he added, “everyone got playing time, and we all got to contribute to the team's success!” He also mentioned that “a big game for us was the game against Peoria Notre Dame; we couldn’t quite come out on top, but we fought really hard, and played really well against a good team.” Iddings added that he was “really looking forward to putting in hard work and hopefully making the Junior Varsity team next year.”

When I caught up with Sophomore Ben Bandy, he told me that the JV team had “formed a great team chemistry,” which had “really grown this season,” also voicing improvements on “shooting and communicating on defense.” A season alone can come with lots of setbacks and obstacles, but adding a pandemic into the mix and you open up a whole new can of worms. Bandy mentioned, “we’ve had to play short-handed a lot this season. Some of our players have tested positive for COVID-19, and we’ve also had a number of injuries that saw some key players missing significant portions of the season, we’ve had to play bigger roles.” The season, just like any season, came with plenty of big memories, but the one that was especially memorable for Bandy was “during the Urbana game. We weren’t playing great until we hit a run in the second half where we made a lot of key shots, and that got the crowd really excited.” Bandy mentioned that in some other important games, “we have really challenged the other team as well as ourselves.” Bandy, a Sophomore, has a few years left with the program, and voiced that in that time he was “looking forward to having success in the coming years, hopefully going deep, maybe even past sectionals and possibly all the way to state.”