Every winter, girls with a passion for basketball gather at Eagle High to try out for the team. This season, starting in November and ending in February, the Eagle High girls’ basketball team have been playing against other high schools, competing for the State Championship title. With fourteen wins under their belt so far, the Eagle High girls would greatly appreciate people getting out to support the team.
After already fifteen games finished with fourteen wins, the girls are on a streak to winning the state championship title. These wins don’t come with luck; the girls on Eagle High’s basketball team practice hard to work towards this goal. Junior Nicole De Vries speaks from experience that practice makes perfect.
“We practice every day, except Sunday, for two hours, unless we have a game on Saturdays,” De Vries said.
Along with practice, working together as a team gives them an advantage to winning games. The girls often do team bonding activities to help learn how to work well with one another.
“We just went to a sauna and polar ice plunge, and we do team lunches or dinners before our games,” De Vries said.
Senior Sophie Younes said, as a team manager, she’s seen a big improvement in communication and chemistry on the court between players.
“The girls have continued, on JV, to know each other better and communicate a lot better on the court with each other, which has led to a lot of unselfish play,” Younes said. “And with Varsity, I think the girls are just growing and being able to find their roles on the team.”
Battle of Bolt against Owyhee High took place Jan. 17, resulting in a win for Eagle High. This is a game many students and athletes at Eagle High look forward to, so the girls put in extra effort to take down Owyhee.
“It was a super fun game. I think it helped us to have a lot of people there because we had this energy that we didn’t have for other games that helped a lot. I think from a basketball stance, we shared the ball a lot and were super unselfish, so we went up by a lot of points in the beginning,” said senior Audrey Baxter, “at halftime when we went into the locker room, we were super hype and had a lot of energy which also was good because we buried them in the second half. It was a super good weekend, and Owyhee has always been a good basketball team, so it felt really good to beat them.”
In the past month, Eagle High has played against Meridian High, Thunder Ridge High, Madison High, Post Falls High, Lake City High, Mountain View High, Middleton High, Centennial High, Capital High and Borah High. Working their way to the state championship title, the girls have also gone outside the Boise and Garden City area to Coeur d’Alene, ID and even Phoenix, AZ.
“They have competed in one tournament, which was the Nike Tournament of Champions in Phoenix, Arizona. They went 4-0 and won the John Anderson Division Tournament,” Activities Director Tony Brulotte said.
The upcoming away games include Kuna High, Boise High, Timberline High, Rocky Mountain High and Ridgevue High. If all goes according to plan the girls will play in both Districts and State at the Idaho Center. The team has a good chance of reaching their goals this season.
“It has been an amazing season thus far. The girls have played at an extremely high level and continue to beat teams by an average of over 20 points,” Brulotte said. “They are impressive on both offense and defense and are so much fun to watch. We are looking forward to the remainder of the season.”
This season, the girls at Eagle High have put in both their time and effort to reflect well on the basketball team, and it has paid off tremendously. For any extra information, go to https://www.westada.org/o/ehs/page/basketball-girls.
