Senior Diamond Boyd prepares to pass the basketball during a game. Boyd reached a milestone scoring 1,000 career points.
With the regular season coming to an end and playoffs on the horizon, there are many things that the varsity girls basketball team can be proud of.
One of their own, senior Diamond Boyd, has been nominated as a “Meathead Athlete of the Month.”
This type of recognition is sponsored by a company known by the name Athletics 2000. Athletics 2000 doesn’t seem to be focused on athletes from any particular district–rather, they seem to make their decisions based on the performance of individual athletes as relayed by student newspapers and organizations.
On top of all this, Boyd also scored her 1,000th career point at the recent varsity girls basketball senior night.
The team as a whole has also accomplished a lot this season.
“Especially recently, we’ve progressively grown as a team,” coach Kathie Swanson said.
Growing as a team, especially under the advisement of a new coach, is an feat for the team and their coach.
It’d be easy to assume that coming into this high school as a new coach would be a difficult transition, but for Swanson, the transition was not so hard.
“Fortunately, the varsity team is a really great group of kids,” Swanson said. “It wasn’t hard coaching them.”
However, Swanson did admit that finding commitment with younger athletes was difficult when coaching lower levels of the sport.
The varsity team has done extremely well during their regular season. With a strong record of 16-9, the team gave their variety of opponents quite a wallop. Their division record is 6-2, and their only losses have been to Rolling Meadows, which has a third rank basketball team.
“I think we gave Rolling Meadows two of their best games this year,” Swanson said.
Swanson said that her biggest challenge this year was guiding her team with a system of coaching that was new to them, and she expressed that she was proud that her team was able to learn this new system in a matter of only three months, as this process can take around a year to fully adhere.
Swanson also said that her biggest achievement this year was simply getting to know the team better.
She and the team are proud knowing that they took 2nd place at their division conference, and they did so by surpassing last year’s win total by two whole games.
“It’s been a fun season,” Swanson said. She also thanks the seniors for their four years of austere commitment to the sport.
“They set a standard this year,” she said.
