After stealing the ball, Jermaine Coney, senior, takes it into the paint and dunks for two points, leading to their 72-52 win against Lowell last Friday.
With hopes to continue the seven year Conference champ streak, the basketball team is training hard and progressing each game. The team has a 4-0 Conference record, making the goal of winning Conference not far out of reach.
“I’d like to win Sectionals and win Conference again,” Tyler Fuller, junior said. “That’d be nice if we did.”
The team agrees that winning Conference would be a big boost that could propel them into another goal, which is to “win a Sectional championship,” Ethan Walker, senior said. “At the very least, feel like we left everything out on the court.”
Sectionals, a round of single elimination games, comes after regular season ends.
“I think we can go far,” Blake Trilli, junior said. “If we win Sectionals I definitely think Regionals will come our way.”
Reaching those goals comes with lots of practice and reducing their weaknesses.
“We have this one drill we’ve been working on recently, it’s called the turkey drill,” Fuller said. “In bowling, turkey is three strikes, and for us we try to get three turnovers in a row. After those turnovers we try to score and that gives us an advantage. We try to achieve at least one turkey each quarter.”
Sometimes the problem is a mental thing, one that has different strategies to combat it.
“One game you’ll be on and the next game you’ll be off and it’s hard not to fight yourself in your head,” Trilli said. “Staying consistent is pretty hard. (The team) is very supportive. Obviously, if we lose there’s bad vibes in the locker room, but they’ll still be there for you. They’ll be supportive.”
They have also worked on playing for each other.
“In the first game everyone played selfishly, it wasn’t like a team thing,” Fuller said. “That’s one of the bigger things (that the team struggled with early on).”
Along with playing for each other, they can only get better if they stay focused, according to Walker.
“As a whole, I’d say the thing we struggle with is sometimes we lack focus,” Walker said. “We need to make sure we’re staying focused 100% throughout the whole game.”
Improving their weaknesses can only go so far to gain success, according to the team.
“I think part of what helps us play like we do is our connectedness,” Walker said. “I think our team is very together, we are very in it together.”
