Seven seconds left, Cannon Falls on defense, leading by three. Playing tight, but smart trying to force a rushed shot. Three…Two…One… the opposing team was forced to throw a bad pass allowing a big win for the Cannon Falls girls basketball team – Just one of the many exciting wins in their 19 games played so far this year. The girls are standing with with a record 8 wins and 11 losses. At the beginning of the season Varsity coach Samantha McCamy said, “I’m excited to see where this group of girls can go. I think if they can come together as one unit as we progress through the season they are going to do some good things.” Now as the season is slowly coming to the end many of the players would agree that this statement has been justified because the season is going better than previous years, despite the few games here and there when the team wasn’t playing very well together.

Senior Kaly Banks thinks that the season is going great. “I am super happy to see a lot of improvement with this program from year to year.” she says. She also wishes that the team would have clicked more towards the beginning of the season so that they would have won some of the close games. “As the season progresses the team is advancing and working to reach their full potential,” stated Kaly.  As a senior, Banks is being very positive about it; she is having fun playing with her friends that she has grown up with and is glad they are making their mark on the program. Freshman Lily Park has a pretty similar opinion on the season. For her, getting varsity minutes as a freshman is nerve racking but exciting. She is happy that she gets the opportunity to learn and improve from playing and practicing with the older girls. Park says, “A con of this season is the ninth grade group is always getting split up and we’re never really all together at the same time anymore.” It is tough but it will be very beneficial in the years to come. Losing seniors next year will be hard on the team but having younger girls with varsity experience will be helpful in the following years.

Because there is just about a month left in the season the seniors are having a lot of bittersweet moments, like counting down the number of games until the end of their high school basketball career. The four seniors are happy they had the opportunity to impact the program but are also excited to start the next chapters of their lives. Everyone on the team is trying to make the best out of these last few weeks. Even though they are not winning very many games they are trying hard to stay mentally tough. Mental toughness is very important to the players and coaches and they take a minute or so every practice to talk about it. It is very effective for most of the players and is really helping to prevent the game from getting into their heads. Even though most of the team is getting to the point where they are ready for the season to be over, everyone is trying to finish strong with smiles on their faces.