As their season begins, the boys basketball team is making some major adjustments. 

In each of the last two seasons, the boys reached the third round of the playoffs. After each of those seasons, the team graduated nine seniors.

With such big chunks of the team graduating during the past two years, this year’s team has a young roster with a bit of rebuilding to do. Coach Jeffrey Hamilton plans to take advantage of the team’s age and believes the future is bright.

“What I love most is that we are young, we’re still learning, figuring out, we’re still molding this group and their potential is pretty high,” Hamilton said.

Rebuilding, however, isn’t something that comes quickly. 

Experience is an obstacle the team will need to overcome early. Junior Davion Sanford said he is trying to step up and be a role model for the younger guys in the program, just like some of last year’s seniors did for him.

“Last year, Kyle Connelly and Josh [Bartley], I was looking up to them,” Sanford said. “They were good players on and off the court. Now to see that they’re all gone, we have to work with what we got, we have to fill their spots.”

Much like in the past, the coaches are setting expectations by holding each player accountable for their actions on and off the court. Senior captain Juan Flores has been in the program for four years now and appreciates how Hamilton runs the team.

“They hold each player accountable no matter who you are, if you’re the best player, the worst player, the coaches always make sure everyone is doing what they have to do to get better as a team and individually,” Flores said.

To the coaches, there is more to the picture than what you may see on the court. They hope that their players take more out of the program than just the athletic side of it.

“How you do anything is how you do everything,” Hamilton said. “It’s more than just basketball for us. We hope these guys leave here and become good, productive young men.”