Big Walnut Sixth Grade Girls Travel Basketball Team takes State trophy

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

To say that mem­bers of the Big Wal­nut Youth Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion BWYBA) Sixth Grade Girls Travel Bas­ket­ball Team had a suc­cess­ful sea­son would be a bit of an under­state­ment. The team posted a 32–5 record this sea­son, and its won three key Sixth Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Divi­sion II tournaments.

In Decem­ber, the Big Wal­nut girls won the Hol­i­day Tour­na­ment at USA Sports, pre­vi­ously known as The Hoop. They won the Feb­ru­ary 15–17 Cen­tral Ohio Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion (COBA) League Cham­pi­onship; and best of all they took home the Sixth Grade Girls Bas­ket­ball Divi­sion II, tro­phy at the Feb­ru­ary 22–24 State School Team Championship.

Mem­bers of the team are Jes­sica (Jessie) Ander­son, Sammi Bick­ley, Erin Boehm, Rylee Bussen, Mikayla Colvin, Kelsie Imertreijs, Miranda Markel, Faith Myers, Emily Neff and Machaela (Mac) Podraza.

Last Thurs­day evening (Feb­ru­ary 28) mem­bers of the team gath­ered with their fam­i­lies, coaches Todd Boehm, Mike Neff and Brian Shel­ton, and with a season’s worth of tro­phies at PJ’s Restaurant’s Ban­quet Room for a post-season celebration.

Coach Mike Neff said the girls had an awe­some year.

“Our goal at the start of the year was to see these girls play together as a team, and they ended up doing just that,” Neff said. “They ended up with a great record against some great com­pe­ti­tion. It was a joy watch­ing them not just play good bas­ket­ball, but also to win against big­ger schools.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.