It’s the beginning a new basketball season, and that means new lineups have been selected for the girls’ varsity, junior varsity, and freshmen teams.
Tryouts were held from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, and practices began on Thursday, Nov. 2.
Due to the large number of senior players on the team in 2016-2017, girls’ varsity has gained many new team members going into the 2017-2018 season. The team also lost their two previous team captains, meaning that new players will be taking charge in the near future.
“Varsity has six returning players and seven new players, so they’re going to be fairly young,” said Dan Mori, the varsity head coach. “We graduated six players last year, and so we have other people coming in to fill their spot.”
On the other end of the court, girls’ junior varsity basketball has started their season as well. Unlike varsity’s relatively new lineup, the junior varsity team is an already close-knit group, according to Kayleigh Bhatt, a junior and team manager for junior varsity.
Sophomore Hanna Li, a point guard, will be playing on junior varsity for the first time this season. With a positive experience from last year’s freshmen team, she hopes to create similar friendships with her new teammates.
“I hope to make more bonds with my teammates, because last year, the freshmen made a lot of bonds. Hopefully, I’ll make new friendships with the juniors, since I also played with some of them as sophomores last year,” said Li.
Recent practices thus far have been lessons for new players and memory-refreshers for returning ones as the teams went over common game-time plays for both offense and defense.
“[Junior varsity has] practiced a lot of plays for people who have forgotten them. We’re also putting some defensive plays in as well,” said Bhatt.
According to Li, the few practices so far in the season have been difficult but still well-worth the effort and fatigue.
“The team is fun, but it’s also very intense, especially compared to last year. If we do something wrong, then we have to run [lines] for it,” said Li. “The practices I’ve been to have been really hard, but I think they’ll let us win games.”
In the end, one thing that both teams agree on is that the upcoming basketball season is likely to be an exciting one.
“Everyone has been working very hard. Team bonding has been very good, and we should be a solid team this year,” said Mori.
