The Week That Was January 11- January 18th

What a week! 23 games in one week makes for a busy week of basketball. Even though I was busy and tired on many of these days, I kept thinking what great opportunities our students get at North Shore. 23 games meant a lot of opportunities to succeed, fail, grow and develop. We had a mix of games from the very exciting to the blow-outs. All of them had lessons for our teams to learn from.

Monday January 11th our Boys Middle School teams headed to Baker Demonstration School. The White team had a close loss and the Purple won starting the week off at 1-1.

Tuesday January 12th was our busiest day of the week with 6 games. The Boys Middle School teams headed to Sears. Again the White team had a close loss and the Purple won. The Middle School Girls hosted Baker at North Shore and won both games. After those games the Fresh/Soph team played Beacon Academy. Beacon Academy is a relatively new school in Evanston. I believer they have only a small high school and thus our Fresh/ Soph team took on their Varsity. Impressively, the Fresh/Soph almost beat them but lost a close one. Our Varsity girls had to travel to Hyde Park whey they lost to U-High thus ending the day 3-3 and 4-4 for the week so far.

Wednesday January 13th was one of the most exciting days of the week as we hosted the JV and V boys teams from Northridge Prep (NRP). NRP is always a tough opponent for us. Coached by former Loyola University coach Will Rey, they are a particularly disciplined team. Their JV used their discipline to defeat our JV easier than we would have liked. And then the Varsity game followed. The Varsity game may have been the best high school basketball game I have watched since our Super Sectional victory in 2012. NRP came out with a box and one on Matt Morette our top player. That initially flummoxed us. But soon we adjusted and others started contributing. Drew Miles at one point hit four 3-point shots. Ben Potter played exceptionally well and Will Lawler made the final steal at the end of the game to seal victory. This was a true team win since so many people contributed. So as of Wednesday we were 5-5 on the week.

Thursday January 14th was our toughest day of the week from a wins and losses outlook. We sent our Middle School boys to Solomon Schecter. We had heard that they were supposed to be powerful and they were. Our purple team lost by 12 and our white team lost by considerably more. But the boys played hard and losses against better opponents are part of the process of getting better. At North Shore the Fresh/ Soph Boys earned a key win over conference rival U-High and the day ended with our JV girls playing Waldorf. Our JV girls had lost a date on their schedule and this was a replacement game. Waldorf though fielded their Varsity team against our JV. The game was back and forth into the 4th 1/4 when Waldorf superior experience led to them pulling away. We were thus 1-3 on the day and 6-8 for the week.

Friday January 15th our JV and Varsity Boys played home against Elgin Academy and swept the two games. The Middle School Girls opened up in the Willows Academy tournament and dropped both Friday games. So heading into Saturday we were 8-10 for the week.

Saturday January 16th was a busy day with five games. Our Middle School girls returned to Willows and won both their Saturday games moving to 2-2 for the tournament. Our Fresh/Soph boys went to NRP and lost a very close game. The Fresh/Soph team has probably played more close games than any other team this year. And after our Hoops 4 Health morning drills clinic for Middle School students, at 11 am our JV girls and Varsity girls played Northside College Prep (NCP). NCP is always among the stronger teams on our schedule. They are coached by Henry Henderson who has coached northside girls basketball teams for years. Henry knows his stuff. It was probably too much for me to hope for that our girls would sweep the NCP games for if they did, we would have an overall winning record for the weekend. Sadly NCP played true to form and defeated our JV and V girls leading to a 10-13 record for the week.


Although I would have liked to win a couple more games this week, I was glad to see so much basketball being played and so much overall growth for our program. Both Beacon Academy and Waldorf School were losses to higher level teams in that they were those schools Varsity teams. And we played so hard on a very difficult week. It was the end of the Semester in the Upper School as well as the Winter Play performance. We are a school with a large agenda. So to get through a tough week for students so well makes me pleased.

This week now is Basketball Bash Week. Only 19 games next week. Oh, there is a 20th if you count the faculty vs. Varsity game on Wednesday. I will have more to report next week.