The Lady Bruins walked off the court as champions at the Bear River Winter Homecoming game, defeating the Colfax Falcons 60-46.
The 2017-18 Girls’ Basketball season started off rough, but now players say they are thriving. Senior Kayla Toft gave her opinion on how this positive change has come about.
“I think it’s just easier, because we know our coach and we are more familiar with him, and he’s a really cool guy,” she said. “I feel like we’ve grown a lot from last year, and we have higher expectations for ourselves.”
Toft also shared how she felt about playing Bear River’s longtime rival school, Colfax, before the game went down.
“I’m really excited,” Toft said. “I think it’s going to be fun to have a lot of fans for our rival game against Colfax and I’m excited about it.”
Senior Karinne McDonald shared her feelings about the team’s relatively new Head Coach Randy Billingsley.
“Last year’s season, at the beginning, it was very weird,” she said. “Just like getting a new coach. For me, I had a Varsity coach for two years and then getting a new Varsity coach was a weird transition for me. … Switching to Randy is more fast paced, and going to a slow offense to a fast defense. Last year to this year it’s a little bit different.”
McDonald was very excited that the Girls’ team was chosen to play for the Homecoming game.
“We’ve proven to everyone that we are a good team and that we can win a Homecoming game,” McDonald said.
Marie-Claire Desplancke, a junior, said that she has similar thoughts to McDonald’s.
“I’m really happy,” she said. “I don’t know when the last time this has happened.”
Desplancke shared how intense the season has been.
“It’s been a lot more intense… going from J.V. to Varsity,” she said. “It’s a whole different world. The girls are a lot bigger, they’re a lot stronger, and they’re a lot faster, so it’s definitely more intense practices, but I think being on Varsity, it’s more like a family.”
Coach Billingsley shared his thoughts about the Girls’ team playing the Homecoming game.
“I think it really highlights our girls,” he said. “I love the fact that we [were] the Varsity game against our big rival, Colfax.”
