By: Dakota Breuker
Is the team finally clicking? Did the culture change? How have the tides turned for the boy’s basketball team?
The boys’ basketball team came into the season with high expectations after a disappointing end to last year’s season. They lost to Holland Christian in the district final and finished 11-13. The team had everyone but Justin Mcillwain returning, and they felt they had what it took to get back to Hamilton’s winning ways.
When the season began, the team was under a lot of pressure. They were senior-loaded, and it was their last chance to assemble everything and bring home some hardware.
However, the season didn’t start the way the team wanted it to. Losing to Wayland in the season opener at home. This was just the beginning. The team would start the season 1-8 before conference play began. The team would lose the conference opener to a good squad from Zeeland East but then would bounce back the next game and beat Zeeland West by 21. This was the start of the turnaround.
Over the next few weeks, the team started collecting wins, game by game. But what changed?
Londin Cooper told me, “More buy-in, knowing that people weren’t believing in us made us work harder. We knew what we were capable of but didn’t have enough belief to do it. We have less arguing during practice, but more of an intense vibe than before.”
Brett Vanderkooi also mentioned, “The energy of the team and we finally clicked like we wanted to at the beginning of the year.”
This all showed when the team had to play their hardest competition up to this point, playing #1 Unity Christian. The boys would go on to shock all of West Michigan beating Unity, 65-63 in a crazy game that ended up going into overtime! With this win the team was able to get back to .500, with a record of 10-10. Quite a ways from where they began the season at 1-8.
As quickly as you can feel the high of beating the #1 team, you can also feel the lows of losing two in a row to end the season. But this was a minor setback in the team’s quest for a district title. The boys are still in a much, much better place than they were just a month ago. They are still playing good basketball at a time when they need to most.
The team will face a familiar opponent, a rematch of the season opener against Wayland, in the District Semi-Final. The boys look to get their ‘get-back’ and advance to the District Final, where they will most likely play Holland Christian for the third time this year.