As the fall season begins to come to an end, the winter season sports are already in action, preparing for their long upcoming season. Full of hard practices, intense games, and screaming fans, both the men’s and women’s basketball team here at Wilkes is getting already getting ready to give their all work together as a team.

It may just be considered a winter sport to some, but to the coaches and players, they work hard all fall season to know what to expect come the winter. Having open gym, to even shooting hoops on outside baskets, both teams find anything they could do to make them even better, and become more a team even before they start really working out.

The more players are around each other more, and how they are working together to achieve one goal, the more you get a feel for how they play, and what they bring to the table. Freshman, Brandon Thompson says the team just seems to connect. “Everything and everyone seems to connect. We really get along well as a team, and that’s the number one thing; team chemistry. We already have that.”

As any team strives to do, is win a championship, come together as a team, and compete against other team that are just as strong as they are. Senior on the men’s team, Cliff Richardson sees his teammates already clicking and coming together. “We are a young team, but we have a lot of guys back with experience that work real hard. The team chemistry is great on and off the court which makes it fun and exciting.”

­­­­­Richardson also said that being a senior, he expects himself, and his teammates to give it their all every game. “Play together, have fun, and make every game like it’s your last.”

During the cold winter, both team are in the gym, sweating, running up and down the court, getting better. Pushing each other to their limit, and learning how each other play, the team gets a good feeling how the team will play during the real games, and not just scrimmaging against themselves.

“It’s a lot of hard work! Practices are all about making sure we know what is expected of us. We are working hard at our positions and working on both the defense and offense of the game,” says incoming freshman to the girl’s team, Brianna Zazzaro. “We’re making ourselves the best we can be and our hard practices show that!”

Sophomore Captain, Elena Stambone feels she’s ready to take on the leading role and push her team to be as successful as they can be. “I expect to improve as both a team and a player from last year. The returning players now have some experience under our belts and we are looking to be a solid”

“We’re going to surprise many people with how competitive we are,” Stambone says. “We have been working to hard at everything to not be a top contender. I know we all want to be as great as we possibly can.”

All teams want to be intimidating and come off stronger then the opposing team. “We want to be a 500 team and above. We want to prove that we aren’t a team that people can walk all over,” Zazzaro strongly enforced. “And if people are going to win over us, they are going to have to fight for that win. We just want to keep improving from game to game.”

Preparing for games, bonding together as a whole, and getting that winning record doesn’t seem so far away from both the boy’s and girl’s team. Both teams want to be looked at as strong, competitive, and powerful. Nothing can stop them from accomplishing what they want.