From Start To Finish Freshman Team
by Luke Mohr
Where we started. In our first matchup against the OC Warriors, we lost by a buzzer beater, but we were short-handed, and they were the best team in the league last year. So I went away with, we gave them a great challenge, so I was happy about that and so was the team. Our second week of play was against Heritage Escondido. That day, we were struggling; we couldn't figure out what we needed to do to stop them. We lost by 11 points in that particular game. After that game, there was a lot of frustration with us not running our offense and defense. Sadly, this left our coaches with no choice but to have us run for an entire 2 hours; We ran “suicides” back and forth and defensive slides for all practice and then took a little needed break. We knew to run our offense right after that painful learning lesson. So when we arrived at the next game, we knew this game was going to be a hard one. We played against Arrowhead. Arrowhead was going to be a tough one.. They were a JV/Varsity team; they didn't have a freshman team, so we had to play up. We beat this team by four points, and I was able to throw a 3 to secure the win. Now, moving on to our next game, we had a doubleheader. We played Escondido, and we beat them by three points. Then we had an hour break, but we were also short-handed, without some of our players needing to leave. We played the Falcons, and they are a really good team, but we were also tired. We had the lead for a long time, but in the fourth quarter, we just lost it; we ultimately ended up losing by five points that game.
Due to drama practice and plays going on, we ended up having a bye week for 2 weeks. We work together as a school. This is a healthy way to be, in my opinion, even though I love basketball. Then practice came, and we had time to come up with more plays to run, and we ended up playing the Falcons again, but we also had an injured player that broke his foot for that game, so he also wasn't there, and we were a little bit short-handed again. We lost to them by 20. I felt good as we ran our plays and worked together. Then we played against their other freshman team, which was the best freshman team in the league, and we lost by 51 to them. That one hurt. After losing both of those games, we played a team called Lake Forest Heritage. They were a JV team, and they had great talent. We played okay on offense, but just defense was not clicking at all. Their best player was everything to them; he just drove into the paint, and we couldn’t do anything about it. They also had a height advantage on us, we lost by 12. Then we played the OC Warriors again. The coach's son was one of the best players in the league. He would shoot half-court threes; that's all he would do. We lost by seven to them. I learned a valuable lesson: he threw those threes because he practices every day and makes 150 shots- yes, that is right, 150 shots. I now with my friend Cole have make a goal to make 25 shots a day. We increased it to 30, then 40. We will continue to increase, and I know that next season will see growth. The last game was against one of our teammate's friends. They were a well-conditioned team but not the best at shooting. It was a great game for one of our players named Christian. He had a lot of points against his friend's team. Our defense was great, and our offense was great. We beat them by 20, and we got out of there with a win.
We now move on to wrapping up the season and where we finished. We began this tournament, which was like playoffs. It is called March Gladness. We got to play Escondido for a third time, and we beat them by 13 points. We were feeling good, and we had improved so much. We advanced to the second round. Friday (our second day in), we had a doubleheader if we won the first game. YES, we won our first game against EVAC silver. We beat them by 30 points. We were all pumped and aware not to get ahead of ourselves. We stayed disciplined and humble. Then we played the OC Warriors, and we beat them by 15 points. After beating the OC Warriors, we knew who we were playing, and that was EVAC Blue on Saturday for the championship. This was Legacy's first time being in the championship or playing at all. The Freshman team was the only team at this point to have all wins in the tournament. We played against their Evac blue team, which is the best team in California and Arizona. They are a travel ball team around the country, and they had a height advantage on us as well; one of our players, Christian, sprained his arm in the OC Warriors game. We were not able to play defense or offense at all, it wasn’t working. We lost to them by 40 points it was a tough loss and when we're all on the court it just felt like the game would never end our offense was okay just our defense was terrible we couldn't play and I think it's just because we got so nervous that we're in the championship and we heard from so many that they have blown out teams by 100 points. Despite this loss, overall, it was a great season, and I'm proud of us for learning offense and defense in less than 3 months and being in the championship. We are second in the league; since they were from Arizona, we are the best in California. Great job, Legacy!