Boys’ Colonels Lose a Heartbreaker

Latin’s Moss Hits Buzzer-Beater to Sink Parker

By Eric Ingall

On a cold Friday night, December 2 at DePaul, Parker and Latin students, parents, and faculty alike piled into McGrath-Phillips Arena for the annual “White Out” basketball game.

The Colonels, led by new coach Kevin Snider and star senior and Williams College-bound recruit Marc Taylor, were coming off a 52-49 win over Lindblom looking to keep their momentum going.

The Romans were just getting over an 83-58 blowout loss to Prairie and trying to find their stride.

Taylor faced off against Latin’s sophomore captain Ysrael “Ys” (pronounced “Is”) Hernandez for the tip as both student sections cheered. Each set of students raised signs and pictures of their respective players. 

Latin jumped out to an early lead, and it seemed like the Colonels were playing catch-up the entire first half. Shots weren’t falling, fouls weren’t being called, and Parker players were making sloppy passes that ended as fast breaks the other way.

Parker hit the ground running after halftime. Taylor was driving and getting calls more often, and coupled with junior Ryan Skok’s finding his shot, the Colonels made the game close.

The fourth quarter was the most intense, back-and-forth period of basketball I have seen in my Parker experience. When one team scored, the other countered it with a bucket at the other end.

The game came down to the wire, as expected. The Romans had the ball and the chance to win it with 30 seconds left. They didn’t hold for one shot, though, and instead ended up missing and giving Parker the ball back. 

With 15 seconds left, the ball was in the hands of Marc Taylor. Junior Alex Chapman inbounded it, but as Taylor dribbled around half court to run out the clock, Latin junior captain Charlie Moss stole it, dribbled into Latin’s half, and called timeout with seven seconds left. Had Taylor not been pick-pocketed, we might have seen the result of a play drawn up for senior Jason Lansing to free himself to hit a buzzer-beater.

Latin inbounded the ball from half court to Moss who took three dribbles to the corner and shot a long two as time expired.  It went in. Nine times out of ten, nobody would make that shot. This just happened to be that one time. 

The next DePaul game is on Friday, January 27 at 7:30 pm. 

Victory at the Girls’ White Out Game

Varsity Girls’ Basketball takes a win over Senn High School

By Abri Berg

In former years, the girls’ basketball team has not been the most recognized athletic team at Parker. With only a handful of players on the team last year, and an aborted season in the recent past, there haven’t been many athletes representing our school in ISL play in the last few years.  But after long and hard work put in by the Athletic Department to reconstruct the program, the interest level has gone up, and many girls showed up to be a part of the team this season. In fact, enough girls are participating that the program chose to split into two teams–varsity and junior varsity–for the first time in many seasons.

On December 2 at DePaul’s McGrath Phillips Arena, the girls’ varsity basketball team took an impressive victory against Senn.

Senior Morgan Harler, one of the team’s captains for the second year now, was very proud of the effort the team was putting in prior to the game. “Everybody is working hard, is passionate, and at the end of the day, we know how to have fun and when to be serious,” she said.  “Each player really cares about representing our school and our game as much as we can.

Given that the team hadn’t received much support from the community in the past, Harler said, the team has created ways to boost one another up. “As players, we’ve been screaming on the bench during games,” she said, “along with having some team-bonding moments throughout the season.”

Since boys’ basketball is the more prevalent sport during the winter season, in her view, Harler has been trying to gather as much support for the team as she can.“It starts with trying to get people to come and being funny about it, since people usually do not respect girls playing basketball,” Harler said.  “People should come out and support us because not only are we a new program, but we’re also a hard-working program.”

Sophomore Elisabye Slaymaker, one of the team’s captains, was feeling confident going into the White Out game. “Having played a game against this team before and winning,” she said, “we know a lot about the team and who their key players are, and we’ve built plays around her.”

The girls ended the first quarter trailing close behind their opponent 7-11. The score remained tight through the second quarter, which ended 16-18.

In the second half, with only a two point difference between both teams, Parker became determined to take the lead. After the game, freshman Natalie Daskal reflected on how both of the captains boosted the team’s motivation. “The captains communicated to us that since we’ve got all of the nerves out during the first half and put a ton of effort into the game,” Daskal said, “it was time to have fun with the rest of the game.”

A big confidence booster for the entire team was when the opposing team’s leading scorer fouled out. “Our team felt an overwhelming sense of ‘Okay, now we can do this!’ and similar to the previous time we played this team, when the same player fouled out, the momentum shifted, and it resulted in a win,” Daskal said, “we felt that it could only get better for us after that.”

And win again they did, 40-31.  And now it’s back to their gym, where the girls will continue practicing to improve on their 2-3 record.