Nothing screams winter more than Basketball season. Whether it’s watching the Lakers play a game on ESPN, prepping your March Madness bracket early or watching the LHS Varsity Boys Basketball team start their season this year.

Their season started back in December and the team won their first home game against Fort Osage on December 12, with the final score of 65-56.

Varsity has been putting in a lot of work during their practices to get ready for the upcoming games.

“Sometimes we lose our men on defense when transition but we’ve been working on that and we’ve gotten better so I think we won’t have too much problem with that, ” junior Hal Tyson said.

The boys have also been working on becoming healthier and playing their best.

“Some [of our] guys have been sick, but we’re getting healthier and we’re starting to play better basketball,” Head Coach Roger Stirtz said.

[The] guys are getting use to the rolls and that it[self] takes some time and it’s a process of understanding those [struggles] and fulfilling those.”

“Things are starting to click and get better, [and] you know there’s going to be some steps backward, but overall right now we’re headed in the right direction [and] I’m really excited about that,” he said.

Even though the Bluejays are working hard, they still had some difficult games to get through to get to where they are now.

“We played Blue Springs. They were undefeated and it went into overtime and we actually got to win so that was good,” freshman Jalen Lewis said.

The team has hopes for what they want to accomplish further into the season.

“Well, I mean of course we’re wanting to get into the postseason, make some noise there [and] do something as a team,” sophomore Clayton Adams said.

The team has even bigger goals they want to achieve than just making it into the postseason though.

“I just hope that we can do well in Districts and get as far as we possibly can,” senior Josh Mapel said.

The Bluejays want to make it to not only to Districts but to State as well, Tyson agreed

“[I want] to go far in the Playoffs, Districts, and hopefully win a State championship but we’re young so that would be challenging. We just wanna end with a winning record,” Tyson said.

With the building of the new gym for next year, the Bluejays will have a new place to call home.

“[The old] Cokely Fieldhouse has been awesome to play in but our guys deserve a nice place, and not that Cokely isn’t nice but they deserve a locker room that’s nice and a new facility, its been due to them,” Stirtz said.

“I’m excited for our guys that they have the opportunity for it, and I think it’s something that our Volleyball players, our girls Basketball players, our boys Basketball players and everyone [and] all the community that gets to take part of it, it’ll be an awesome experience and I think it’s going to be very, very beneficial to each one of our programs, but more importantly to our school and to our community, it’s going to be a great place.”

The Varsity Boys Basketball team has an exciting season ahead of them and they play not only for the goals of getting to Districts and going further on into the season, but because they enjoy what they do.

“Well, I just love the game [and] I love the team. There’s not much else to it really,” Adams said.