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video by Sarah Yun

It’s almost winter which means winter sports are just about ready to start back up! Girls Varsity Basketball tryouts took place in the contest gym on Monday, Nov. 2 after school. Tryouts continued up until Wednesday and varsity coach Anthony Konsewicz is getting ready to finalize his team now.

“I think that the biggest challenge this team is going to face this year is youth. We only have three seniors playing and pulled up a few underclassmen. It’ll be a challenge getting the first timers up to speed but once we do that, I feel like everything will be going the way we want it too,” Konsewicz said.

Tryouts went unexpectedly well.

“The first day was anticipated to be pretty a rag-tag, not really know what to do, type of tryout but that wasn’t the case at all. For the most part, all of the girls knew what they were doing and between the three days we’ve had, everything is going much better than expected,” Konsewicz said.

Returning senior Selma Sabovic said, “Obviously I’m looking forward to all of our games this year, especially the Niles North game, but since I’m a senior I really am looking forward to senior night. It’ll be fun to have a good time with the whole team and have my parents come up on the court.”

Coach Konsewicz is mainly looking forward to working with the girls.

“We really like to have fun in practice but we also want everyone to get better. Teaching is a huge part of why we are able to play well together on the court. Sometimes though, the best kind of teaching is the fun kind of teaching,” Konsewicz stated.

Konsewicz pulled up one freshmen and two sophomores for this year’s season.

Freshman Samantha Galanopoulos said, “I’m not really nervous. Of course the first few games I’m going to have butterflies and have to adjust a little bit, but I’m confident that I’ll be just fine. Also, with the help of  the upperclassmen, I’m pretty much already adjusted to the varsity intensity that we are expected to play at.”

This year might be a little bit of a challenge, but nothing too challenging to stop these girls from playing as hard as they can on the court.

“This is my fourth year playing basketball at Niles West and I’m really happy with how much I have improved,” Sabovic said, “this year I plan to work extra hard not only to get better for myself, but for my team. This is my last year playing so I want to make it the best I possibly can.”

There will be 15 girls on the team this year.