As winter approaches so does basketball at Normal West for both the girls and the boys. The girls’ basketball team has their first game November 16 at home versus Central Catholic in the first Intercity game. The boys’ basketball team has their first Intercity game November 23 at Illinois Wesleyan, also versus Central Catholic.

Last season the girls’ basketball team had a record of 11 wins and 19 losses. Even through the girls had more losses than wins, they still managed to win regionals in three games versus Bloomington, Danville, and Bradley.

After winning the regional title, they went on to play in the sectional game versus Rock Island where unfortunately the lady Wildcats lost 74 to 41. This loss in postseason brought their season to a sad end.

Last season the girls’ basketball team had 7 seniors graduate. Senior Kailey Brandon said, “We have a lot of new girls coming to our program. This year our team is very young. We only have two seniors, myself and Jana Arthur. I’m very excited to see what this season brings. We will definitely miss last year’s seniors, but we have a lot of talented girls and I think we can go all the far if we work hard every day in practice.”

Brandon added, “With Coach Ostling being our new varsity head coach, this season will be different all around. As far as goals, I think we would all like to win regionals again this year and hopefully go from there. I’m excited to see what’s to come for the team this year.”

Last season the boys’ basketball team finished with a record of 17 wins and 12 losses. In the regional game versus Bradley Bourbonnais, the Wildcat boys fell by a score of 49 to 46, to put an end to their season.

Senior Richard Simpkins said, “I look forward to playing with my brothers for the last time and playing good basketball.”

The boys’ basketball team only lost 2 seniors last year, Austin Zobrist, and Michael Rhoda. Simpkins also said, “We only had two seniors last year who both made an impact on the team but, we have four starters coming back so I believe we will be just fine.”