One always wishes for a supportive team, in which the coaches correct your mistakes and the players play as one. But one also wishes to feel victory and relish in glory when you win.

Truth is, the varsity girls basketball team didn’t get to experience that glorious moment. We didn’t have as many wins as we wanted this season, but we had a team that worked hard to be where it is now, filled with more hope than ever before for the future seasons to come.

Indeed, I concur that it’s difficult to lose quite a few games, but we had the key coaches and the players working to their best. The team is young–only one senior–but it is a thriving one. My teammates were the ones that made the season exciting, yet competitive.

I learned the meaning of good coaching this year. With the coaches’ expertise, they trained the driven varsity girls basketball team. The remarkable trainers, Head Coach Chris Mustaine and assistant Coaches Letherio Jones, Ligon Brooks and Taylor Wilson, always had some piece of advice–whether it was to fix our shooting, dribbling or guarding. And as always, whenever they helped us, it was like magic, fixing our problem right away.

I was working on my free throws with Coach Taylor. She told me to focus intently when I got up to the line and to bend my knees just enough for the ball to swish through the net. And whoosh, in it went.

Coach Jones also helped me with free throws. I went to ask him for his advice on how to shoot free throws. He turned that question into a training session so I could work on my shots all over the court including three pointers, free throws, jump shots and layups.

Coach Mustaine is the dream coach that I always wanted to have for basketball because of his captivating and radiating energy, as well as his crystal clear explanations of the plays.

Our practices would begin with dynamic stretching, followed by right and left hand layups around all the baskets inside of the gym. Next, was free throws and, afterwards, we ran through plays. He always finished practice with a positive note. After every single game, whether we won or lost, which was most of the time, he delivered a positive and self motivating speech that drove you to work even harder for the upcoming practices and games. He made me want to work even harder to improve my skills.

I also learned how important it is to have a strong leader. Throughout the five months of the season, we grew from being just a team that had to play with each other because those are the rules, into a supportive family.

To help with this bond was Senior Maria Liebert. I watched her become such an inspirational captain, one I would like to be during my own senior year. Before or after every game, she would give a speech that would get us pumped up, filled with energy for the game. She would say that the scoreboard shows only numbers, but we still had to play our hardest to challenge the other team.

The more hard work and effort you put in, the more you gain from it. We may have not won all of the games, but what was on the scoreboard were just numbers. To us, we gained a close friendship and put in a lot of work that will lead into the next season and the rest of our lives.