Photo was taken by Daniel Pownall<\/p>\n
As the air becomes colder, the basketball season draws closer. The Rockets are excited to start the new season with lots of energy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The football team had one of its strongest seasons ever, and this is something that has inspired the basketball team. \u201cI think it has inspired us just because seeing a Catholic High team compete and be as great as they are\u00a0pushes\u00a0us to do better,\u201d said senior basketball player CJ Onyekwelu.<\/span><\/p>\n Like the football team, the basketball team also dropped one division (From 6A to 5A-Central), and as a result, many of the teams that they will face are new to them. Head basketball coach Mr. Todd Ezzi said, \u201cI don\u2019t think that there\u2019s a lot of difference as far as competition level with the teams that are in our conference compared to what it was before, so I really don\u2019t think there will be a whole lot of an effect.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the effects of the division drop for the football team was an increase in travel times to away games. This is something that won\u2019t have a major effect on the basketball team. \u201cFor us, the travel time really didn\u2019t change.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t looked at the exact total, but most of our games are still pretty local,\u201d said Mr. Ezzi. \u201cOur travel times really are not going to be affected much. In fact, some of our games are closer than what we had before. We dropped Conway and added teams like Sylvan Hills and Jacksonville, so not a lot of travel time for us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n While one of the goals of the team is to win and be successful, they believe that there are more important things than just that.\u00a0 Mr. Ezzi said, \u201cI think early in the year we\u2019re going to be gaining experience, which I think will be really important, but I think as those guys get that experience they\u2019re going to develop quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the reasons why Mr. Ezzi believes that gaining experience is so important for the team is because of how many new players there will be. \u201cWe\u2019re definitely going to rely on some juniors and possibly some sophomores, but I think that the seniors that we\u2019ve got coming back are good leaders,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Since the team is younger, they will be able to grow a lot throughout the season. Onyekwelu said, \u201cI think being younger we\u2019re going to have a lot of mistakes, but that\u2019s just a part of the growing process. The thing about the young guys is that they just want to get better and being younger we can play with more energy.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n While the season ahead has some uncertainties like a new division and a younger team, they still look forward and see big things. \u201cWe\u2019re a young team but we\u2019ve got a lot of energy,\u201d said Onyekwelu. \u201cI think we\u2019re coming into the season really optimistic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Photo was taken by Daniel Pownall As the air becomes colder, the basketball season draws closer. The Rockets are excited to start the new season with lots of energy.\u00a0 The football team had one of its strongest seasons ever, and this is something that has inspired the basketball team. \u201cI think it has inspired us…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":9448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[206,97],"tags":[143],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/liftoffnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/DSF3709.jpg?fit=6240%2C4160&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3xfZw-2sn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/92"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9452,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9447\/revisions\/9452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liftoffnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}