Is Bulldog Basketball Back?

Virtual school for PCCS started on September 8, 2020. West Middle School Principal and Middle School Sports Liason, Mr. Smiley, and the West basketball coaches, Mr. Wells and Mr. Wooster share their thoughts on the expectations that will need to be followed to keep the gym and materials clean and the players and coaches safe.

Mr. Smiley stated, “I am thinking that West Basketball, well I would like to see it happen, I’m waiting for a couple of things though, number one: we have volleyball tryouts next week and I am waiting to see how the volleyball tryouts go and how the volleyball season goes and not just at West but at other buildings. And then the other thing I am waiting on is MHSAA which is the Michigan Highschool Athletic Association. I’m waiting to see what their directions and instructions are going to be about basketball because Highschool basketball will start before our middle school season starts so we will be able to follow along and see what their thinking is and how it goes.”

West students can’t wait to be playing sports again, but safety must be considered during this pandemic. Covid cases are rising and we could end up without a basketball season this year. 

Mr. Wells, the boys’ coach, “The first thing I would do is minimize contact of a ball…We would also have to sanitize before and after practice and make sure everything is very structured and how practice looks so we can minimize the spreading and all the things that would make this place unsafe.” 

Mr. Wooster, the girls’ coach, claimed, “I usually like to scrimmage a lot during practice but now we will have to adjust to some 1 on 1 drills and also for each practice we will also have to make sure only a certain amount of players go against each other just to limit the amount of contact they have with each other.”

After hearing from the experts, they have all obviously come up with some things that will have to be adjusted in order to keep the gym, players, and coaches safe and clean. Some of those things would be to have the players wear masks, try to limit the contact of the players during practice, limit the number of people in the gym at once, and have sanitizing stations for the players and coaches.

Lots of the drills will have to be adjusted and also the way the coaches will have to coach in general. Mr. Wooster stated, “I’ve been thinking about using some hand signals because when you are wearing a mask your voice sounds muffled so I was thinking of using some hand signals to help communicate better with the players but either way, there are going to be some changes we just don’t know yet.”

Lots of students at West, both boys and girls, were planning on trying out for West basketball 2020, but now since there have clearly been some changes that have happened, we don’t fully know what is going to happen when it comes to West Basketball.