A new girl’s season of hoops and dreams
Courtesy of Flickr
Both the Boys and Girl’s varsity basketball teams look to repeat the conference victories of last season, while also making deeper runs into the playoffs. Both coach Hill and Lazar believe that each of their teams respectively are better and improved.
December 8, 2017
Girls varsity basketball players have to make many decisions while playing on the court. But now they have a much more important decision to make off the court.
Some of Head Coach Adam Lazar’s players are already looking at, or even committed to colleges. Kennedi Myles, ‘19, has committed to the Miami University. SENIOR Regan Anderson is looking at a lot of Division two schools. Sean Kelly Darks and Darian Burgin, ’20, are getting lots of Division one interests.
In previous seasons with Lazar, the WHHS girls varsity basketball team has an overall winning record. For the past five years in a row, they have been ranked in the top ten. In the 2013-14 season they had a conference record of 11 wins and one loss, and in the 2015-16 season they had a record of nine wins and five losses. For the 2017-18 season, they are currently undefeated and ranked number five in the city.
Lazar has been coaching for 19 years, 15 at WHHS. He has coached for both the girls and boys team but now only coaches for the girls varsity team.
Besides being a coach, he is also a teacher in the social studies department, where he teaches American Government, and AP U.S. history .
Not only is Lazar looking forward to winning in the 2017-18 season, but mentions how this team has a lot of players that will acquire personal accomplishments. Two of his players, Anderson and SENIOR Emma Mertes, only need 16 more wins and they will be apart of the “winningest girls basketball players in the history of this school,” Lazar said.
Challenges that this year’s team will face is that one of his players, Mertes, injured her ACL, and she is out for the season. Lazar referred to Mertes as the “rock” of the team.
Lazar’s coaching style is centered around his team coaching each other. He says that the team “has such great leaders”, where they have built “such a great culture”, that reflects what he expects from his team.
Lazar recently made a bet with the school and his team that if the game against Fairfield had every seat filled then he would get a class of 2018 tattoo. Though all the seats were not filled at the game,“ I am going to get a tattoo of some sort, to represent Walnut Hills,” Lazar said.
“We are gonna make a really big run this year,” and “we hope the school is excited about us,” Lazar said.
