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Hello HBR community,  

This is your 8th grade HBRMS basketball co-captains, Braxton Holcomb, Travis Herrmann, Gavin Pickert, and Jackson Dukes. We are currently a little over half way through the middle school season. This season there has been a lot of change. This is the first year we are all playing together on one team. We had 5 people on the 7th grade team move up last year which were key parts of what would’ve been the 7th grade team last year. Yet this year we are 7-1 over half way through the season. As the season goes on our team becomes closer and stronger. The energy on the court is off the charts this year. It’s nothing like anyone on our team has been a part of. We plan to keep that up and continue to build as a team.

Our 8th grade team this year consists of Justin Sabotta , Daniel Avitia, Judd Bark, Izzy Gutierrez, Yeshua Morales , Xavier Boston, Jake Curry, Zach Juneau, Colten Sargent, Adam Ness, Braxton Holcomb, Gavin Pickert, Travis Herrmann, and Jackson Dukes. We are coached by Coach Bastian and Coach Ruh. This is the first year that all of us have all played together as one team. We have had to come together and work as a team throughout our ups and downs.  Up to this point we have learned more how to play together as a team.    

After suffering our first loss to Lisbon we had to find a way to bounce back. What we did was try to come together more as a team and try to move past it. The next game we came back and got back on track and got a win. While we still had lots of turnovers we came together more and played as a team. We are still trying to get our energy back up on the court in game and in practice. As we have more practices I think that we have been playing with more energy and as a team and we have been finding our confidence. The biggest thing we need to figure out is how to learn from our mistakes. Even if you or a teammate is down we need to bring them back up, help them with their mistakes.                                                                         

As captains we have jobs to do. Some of our jobs include cleaning up the locker room, getting practice set, leading stretches, and many more. We all had to apply to be captain knowing these roles we had to take on.  Coach goes to us first then there is a problem. We take account of the actions of our teammates. The leadership skills we are building will be used by us for the rest of our life. We have been working with some of our teammates to get their confidence up and skills improved. If everyone gets better by 1% every day we know that everyday our team improves.

As the season wraps up and the tournament is around the corner we will continue to come together as a team and build off what we have. We will continue to play together and keep pushing each other to get better.  We would like to thank everyone for your support and attendance at games this season.