Junior Taaj Findley shoots the ball looking for a shot during their scrimmage. Photo taken by Jesaias Benitez.
BY JESAIAS BENITEZ & EMRAUDE BONNET
Malden High School’s girls basketball team has definitely improved from their last season and really proved their placement here at MHS. The team had many more wins on their table then last season.
They definitely left a lasting impression on the teams they played against for the last time in the GBL league. As a team, they definitely worked on things that contributed to the definition of a successful team, that led them to end the season with succeeding in their goal of not only improving upon their previous record, but improving their cohesiveness as a team.
The entire team has made such a drastic improvement from the previous seasons thanks to the new coaching staff. Coach Scott Marino has really pushed all of them to strive for success and he has put a lot of stress on unity. The freshmen, junior varsity, and varsity teams are not individual teams, but instead one unified team.
McKenzie Vo is a senior who plays guard on her first year of varsity this year. The team she wanted to beat was Lynn Classical because they have a great program the really pushes the varsity team to play the best that they can. Her goals for this season were to become more aggressive and physical in which she has shown on the court.
This season, Vo expected for everyone to come together as a team, because in previous years she feels like they focused more on the game of basketball than their connections with the team. “Basketball is important, but games can’t be won with a group of individual players. Teamwork and communication is just as important as talent and skill,” Vo said. The girls varsity basketball team most definitely came together as a team this season with great communication skills on the court that was very noticeable.
When Vo heard that the previous coaches from last year would no longer be a part of the program, she was “prepared for an entire new routine.” She expected the bar to be raised higher, and it was. She explain how she has “actually made an improvement from last year. In [her] previous years, [she] didn’t have enough confidence in [herself] to shoot 3’s and none of [her previous] coaches had pushed [her] as much as [Marino] to do that.
Towards the beginning of this season, Coach Marino said that every guard has to shoot threes and hearing that made her feel small because she was thoroughly convinced that she wasn’t able to do it. Within a couple weeks of practice, Vo was building enough confidence to shoot and along with her accuracy, she was able to get better. It felt really gratifying to be able to do something that she thought she couldn’t do for so long.”
Throughout the season, the work put in during practices and games finally payed off. Especially for the girls who were able to not only set the bar higher, but also improve the girls basketball program throughout the school and district. This all wasn’t able to have happened without the help and effort of the coaches, assistant coaches, and the players themselves.
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