Determined Huskies rejoice in season's first win at English Valleys

By Paul D. Bowker
Posted 1/14/23

The determination was evident. All you had to do was look into the eyes of Highland senior Tyler Thompson.

An English Valleys player had grabbed a rebound underneath the basket in the Jan. 5 …

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Determined Huskies rejoice in season's first win at English Valleys

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The determination was evident. All you had to do was look into the eyes of Highland senior Tyler Thompson.

An English Valleys player had grabbed a rebound underneath the basket in the Jan. 5 game between the Huskies and the Bears. Thompson, unwilling to just let things go at that, ripped the ball away.

“I hate losing,” Thompson said later. “I want to win so bad.”

And that’s precisely what made this moment, well, a moment.

The Huskies hadn’t won a game all season. Actually, all year. The boys basketball team had lost its first eight games, extending a losing streak that began last February with late-season losses to Keota and Winfield-Mt. Union. As discouraging as that was, the Huskies didn’t win a game during the entire football season, losing games by as many as 55 points.

Thompson broke his ankle in football.

So, when an opponent grabs a rebound in front of you on a cold winter night in North English, you just take the ball away. Enough.

The Huskies began the basketball season back in November by scoring 13 points and losing by 58 to Washington County rival Hillcrest Academy.

Enough.

Against English Valleys, the Huskies scored just six points in the first quarter, but were still ahead by three. At halftime, they held a 17-16 lead.

A glimmer of hope led to confidence for a team that returned zero starters from an 18-loss season in 2022. The Huskies began to make shots in the second half. They didn’t turn the ball over as much. They made defensive stops. And they grabbed rebounds.

By late in the third quarter, Highland had cruised ahead to a 12-point lead. And when had that last happened, Huskie Nation?

In just a matter of minutes, a struggling team seemed to grow up right in front of head coach Bill Zywiec.

“We’re young in the sense that even though we have seniors, we don’t have a lot of varsity experience,” Zywiec said. “We talked about, at the break time, that we can no longer call ourselves a young team. We have to start playing basketball at the level everyone else is playing at.”

Soon, the Huskies were making plays. Logan Bonebrake, a senior who is playing for the first time in two years, grabbed a game-high 9 rebounds and scored 13 points. Logan McFarland, a sophomore, had a game-high 7 steals. Thompson and McFarland each grabbed 6 rebounds.

They could taste a victory.

“We all kind of just felt like, this is ours,” McFarland said. “We’ve been waiting all season. It’s a new year. Just get this win and secure it.”

“I think we all had that feeling, that we were going to take it,” Thompson said.

Suddenly, the pieces were coming together and Zywiec wasn’t left with calling those desperation timeouts that coaches often have to call for.

“One thing I did notice more in the second half than I have pretty much all season, we started playing together as a team,” Zywiec said. “You know, we’ve got five guys out there that haven’t played together before and I think a lot of times they thought it was on their shoulder to do everything themselves. Today, we were unselfish with the ball, we found the open guy. That makes a huge difference. When we think team first and ourselves second, great things happen for us.”

When the Huskies danced off the court with a 40-30 win, their first victory against English Valleys since 2020, the smiles came out. They ran to their locker room and celebrated with triumphant shouts for the first time in nearly a year.

“First win of my sophomore year,” McFarland said. “Feels great, honestly.”

Less than 12 hours later, they were back in the gym for a 6 a.m. practice.

Those early-morning practices feel a lot better after a win.

News columnist Paul Bowker can be reached at bowkerpaul1@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter: @bowkerpaul

Highland Huskies, basketball, English Valleys