Varsity basketball goes out with a bang

On Fri. Feb, 19, the varsity boys basketball team played their first game of the 2016 Alabama High School Athletic Association regionals against Oak Mountain High School.

The boys prepared for this game by committing to countless hours of rigorous practice. The team began the season with a rough start, winning only one out five games. The more they played, the more experience they gained.

“We took our lumps earlier in the season playing a rugged schedule and the guys kept working hard everyday. They kept battling, and they improved. By the second half of the season, we were winning some big games and improving and getting better,” varsity boys coach Jamie Coggins said.

As they began to win more games, it became apparent how much the team had grown. The team started the season with only three out of 11 returning players.

“I felt like the season was a really good season because we were a young inexperienced team. They had to grow up a lot. We ended up winning a game in the area tournament that propelled us to Wallace State. When you look at the development of our team and the way our team grew up, I was very proud of them,” Coggins said.

The team ended the season with a 5-1 record in the area and 7A Area 8 runner-up, and their final game was against Oak Mountain High School at the Wallace State tournament. The Oak Mountain team started off strong, controlling the beginning of the game.

“I thought our defense was keeping us in the game. We were struggling on the offensive end, but we hung in there,” Coggins said. “I thought that sooner or later we would make run in the second half, and I just wanted to get to halftime and keep [the score] in that five to eight [point] range, and we did.”

Once the second half of the game came around, both teams were trying their hardest to win and it came down to the wire with an end score of 43-40 in favor of Oak Mountain.

“I really believed that when we took the lead, we were going to win the game. There were some plays here and there that happened down the stretch. Oak Mountain made one big play and that is usually what a game comes down to,” Coggins said.

Winning Wallace State was the goal of every team member, including the coach, and when that prediction failed to come to fruition, everyone on the team was deeply disappointed.

“We all believed that we were going to win the whole game. We were very disappointed that we didn’t come out with the win. We had plans to win the whole thing,” senior Willie Eutsey said.

After losing what the team did not know would be their final game of the season, the team made it obvious to the crowd how much this one game meant to them. Even with the loss, the team tried their hardest, and all the games they played, win or lose, just gave them more experiences as a new team.

“It was a devastating loss because we thought we had the game right where we wanted it with the position we were in. When guys and coaching staff put so much effort into it and care so much, you can see through the emotion and the body language what it meant to our guys,” Coggins said.