taking The final shot

This year’s seniors’ perspectives on their time playing together over the years

by Kristen May content editor

The seniors of the girls basketball team started playing together in elementary school, and then some of them split when they got to middle school. However, they all reunited when they entered high school and soon got back into their old groove. “I’ve been playing for four years and it’s been really fun,” Sophie Simon remarks. “It feels like a family. We’ve all made really great connections with each other and the coach.” For Halli Warner, the best thing to do was to “keep going because a lot of the time I wanted to quit because it’s a six month sport [with] two hour practices every day but [just]…keep your head down and the only way to get through it is to charge through it,” she advises.

With all of this hard work, the team has had some big accomplishments this year. “Our first game this season was against Grand Haven, and it was a really difficult game and we haven’t beat them in like decades,” Simon recalls. “We beat them, and that was our first game. It set the tone for the season.” One of Warner’s significant memories for her was the games the team played against West and how big of an accomplishment that was when they won. “We blew them out both times, and as a team, it was just really fun,” she states.

Being a member of the girls basketball team comes with many benefits off the court, such as improved work ethic and lower stress levels. “Being a part of a team who have the same goals as you and who are working to put in the same amount of work you are…[is] a really great thing to be a part of,” describes head coach Jennifer Dutmers. Simon also finds that “[being on a team has] taught me to manage my time a lot better because it’s a lot, especially during the season like managing studying and practices and especially away games where we’re gone all night,” she shares.

Above all else, the long-lasting friendships that the girls have made are the most valued aspects of being on the team, especially for this year’s seniors. “We’ve been playing together since elementary school, so we’ve been playing together for a long time,” Simon notes. “So we’re all really close, they’re some of my best friends.” For newcomers, “anyone who joins the team, we develop connections and we’re all really good friends,” she adds. This year’s girl’s basketball team members are really close and have developed very strong bonds, which is a necessary element in order for the team to succeed. For Warner, she will miss the camaraderie of the team the most as she moves on to college. “[I’ve] made my best and closest friends from playing together from such a young age and through high school together. I’m definitely really close with them,” she reflects. //