Intramural basketball: Shooting for the stars
BBB player Logan Coty jumps to block a shot from Bad Intentions player Sean Collins.
Season In Review
Players are warming up on the three basketball courts in the field house. Adrenaline is pumping, teams are preparing and players are trash talking as the highly anticipated season gets underway. Students of all years participate in the non-competitive, yet competitive league. Players enjoy the self officiated games and its one game a week commitment.
There isn’t much work needed to be done to be a part of the sport. There’s one day a week where you play between one to three games that last 18 minutes. Unlike the school team where there are two hour practices held everyday after school and games on top of that, students involved in intramurals don’t have to give up all of their time to play basketball.
Players of all teams pile into the field house to watch their friends play before their game. Junior Aidan Lindley loves the hype and the energetic atmosphere in the field house.
“The courts are always packed because everyone is waiting for their own game. There’s always a lot of cheering and screaming when the other teams do something well,” Lindley (11) said.
Then it becomes time for the players who were watching to play their own game. The adrenaline levels rise among the players to a point that cannot even be imagined.
“I love the hype and the fun of intramurals. There’s a lot of hype when everyone is watching our games and how crazy everyone gets when we score,” senior Arun Aruloli (12) said.
Aruloli believes that intramural basketball is better than actual basketball games. He said that it’s a lot more fun to just play the game with friends rather than watching the school basketball team play system basketball. He likes how fancy and creative you are allowed to be in intramurals rather than watching a lot of formal basketball. Aruoli also said that he regrets not playing freshman year.
Championship Game
The whistle blew to signal the tip off. Teams BBB and Bad Intentions squared off in the final game of the season. The winner of the game played the teachers during the Winter Recognition Assembly.
The game was hard fought by both sides. The contest between the two super power teams started off surprisingly slow. Neither team scored for the first two minutes and 40 seconds. Greg Tow (12) put the first points up on the board with a breakaway layup two minutes and 45 seconds into the game. Connor Farrington (12) grabbed the rebound and put it back up for an easy layup a minute later for Bad Intentions. This put the score at 2-2 four minutes in.
That’s when the storm hit Bad Intentions. Six minutes later, a three from Danny Wizceb (12) started the scoring run that would put this game out of reach. The next offensive play, Logan Coty (12) knocked down a three, followed by another three pointer from Danny Wizceb which quickly put BBB up by nine points. Right after the three by Wizceb, Tow stole the ball and found Choi for a breakaway layup. They scored 11 points in two and a half minutes. Choi scored a three pointer with 10 seconds left in the first half making the score 16-2 BBB going into the half. Wizceb led the team in scoring with six points.
“The feeling was pure happiness just knowing all of our hard work paid off going into the championship game was awesome,” Wizceb (12) said.“I mean overall, it’s just a team effort. I was glad the boys picked up where we left off after I hit a couple big buckets there.”
The second half started up again. The game seemed over at that point. It looked like there was no way Bad Intentions could comeback and give BBB a run for their money.
It looked like more of the same to start the second half. Brandon Harris (12) opened up the scoring with a three. Jimmy McDonald (12) sucked the life out of Bad Intentions with all of his offensive rebounds. That wasn’t going to stop Drew Beitzel (12) as he started to lead a comeback against BBB.
“I really wanted to beat the team because we lost to them two times before that,” he said. “Towards the end it was getting really intense.”
Beitzel came up with a big steal on Jake Morris (12) and took the ball down to the other end and threw up a lucky layup to give the team some motivation. This led to a three pointer by Farrington that kissed off the glass. With around three minutes left to go, Alex Oehrlein (12) stepped back and knocked down a three. This put Bad Intentions down by only 11 points. Right after that, Josh Boyer (12) stole the ball and layed it up on the fast break. The lead was cut down to single digits.
The lead was still too big to overcome. A late layup by Boyer finished the game. The final score was 21-14.
Confidence is the name of the game when it comes to BBB. Senior Alex Choi was another positive factor for the BBB team.
“To be honest, [the championship game] wasn’t really much of a challenge since we’ve been playing together for so long. Our team chemistry was really good because of prior high school basketball experience,” Choi said “[The championship game] was like any other win.”
Tow and the other guys on BBB have been playing with each other since fourth grade. He believes that the chemistry they have is a huge factor to why they were so dominant this season.