JLA has its first basketball team in the middle school boys. The team has played two games. One at Hebrew Academy and one at home against Lanar. Both ended well with wins. We went into the practices and games to see how the team is training, what they need to work on, and what the results show. 

The boys started practicing in the middle of February and have been rapidly improving. The team has a wide variety of experience from kids who play three to four basketball games on the weekend to kids who thought that the team would be a fun activity. So they started straight from the basics of passing, dribbling and moving. Then they started to learn offensive and defensive strategy and kept on building from there. 

Their first game was played at Hebrew Academy on Tuesday, March nineteenth, and JLA ended up victorious by a score of 23-19. The team got great efforts from Jacob Dayan, who put up 11 points, and Misha Greenblat who put up six points. The whole team played great defense, forcing Hebrew Academy to shoot bad shots. They also ran the offense very well under the notion that it was the first time that they did it live. The team also played very well down the last stretch of the game. It was a great win but it came with some coaching concerns. 

The team had a lot to work on from boxing out to running the offense against different types of defense. However, they showed off all their hard work at home in a dominating victory of Lanar. A final score of 33-15 JLA was up 21-0 to start the game. Ari Small and Misha Greenblat combined for 21 of JLA’s total 33 points. JLA got rewarded with 10 steals for all their hustle. The ball moved very well and rebounding was much better, which were some of the main points of the practices prior. It was a fun game especially with the home crowd on our side. Teachers, parents, grandparents, and siblings all showed up to cheer for the Jaguars. 

The boys now have one or two more games to play depending on scheduling. Coach Ganser is working on securing more games for the team, but nothing is confirmed. Even if the team only has one more or no more games. Everyone has enjoyed playing, watching and being connected to JLA’s first basketball team.