CCHS’ New Open Gyms

BY MARK BRENT

With the emergence of Cooper City’s open gyms, the Cowboys’ men’s and women’s varsity basketball teams hope to discover new talent and make improvements following last year’s disappointing seasons.

Open gyms allow anyone that attends CCHS to showcase their basketball skills in front of the Cowboys coaching staff during scrimmages against other students and are beneficial in a variety of ways. Due to the fact that the Cowboys’ cannot officially practice until basketball season, these open gyms give the teams opportunities to get together and work on elevating both their individual performances and team chemistry. They also give people the ability to audition for the team prior to the day of the actual tryouts. In order to see if a player truly has potential, one must see how they play against real life competition, and what a better way to compete for a spot on the team by playing against other kids whom are trying out as well. Even more important, it allows players to get to know the coaches and build relationships with them.

While trying to forget a crestfallen 0-20 season for the men’s varsity basketball team, our Cowboys hope to recover and make refinements based off of last year. Junior combo guard Noah Peska shared his perspective on open gyms and his expectations for the upcoming season.

“I believe open gyms are beneficial to the team because you never know who will show up,” Peska said. “There is a lot of talent at CCHS and we just hope that people will want to play for our team.”

Peska is also a firm believer in the development of team chemistry. Having a team with a majority of players being sophomores, the players get the convenience to compete as a team for 3 years. Therefore, Peska enjoys getting together with his “family” and getting better for the upcoming seasons. Also, with a new district that best suits the type of athletes Cooper City has, the competition level will not be as superior as last years, allowing the Cowboys to perform at their highest potential.

“We have made a numerous amount of improvements and I expect us to have a great season,” Peska said. “A lot of things can happen with a young team and we are highly anticipating our first game.”

Hopefully this sheds some light for the Cowboys and helps them recover from a tough 2014-2015 season and we will be there on November 17th for their first game.

Our lady Cowboys, who played mediocrely last season, went 8-10. With clear desires to go above and beyond this upcoming year, girls varsity Head Coach Lorraine Stanchich-Brown is doing her best to prepare the lady Cowboys for the new district. This new district hopefully brings prosperity and success to CCHS’ Cowboy basketball team.

Despite the rocky seasons for our Cowboys, Cooper City’s open gyms foreshadow a successful 2015-2016 season and we are all anxious to witness the improvements the coaching staffs have made.