-Photo provided

Tuesday March 10th, Union Middle School held their annual winter sports assembly, that gives recognition to the students participating in boys and girls basketball & wrestling.

As coach for the 8th grade girls basketball team, I wanted to give a shout out to this group of young ladies and their parents.

Every coach, no matter what sport, wants to win. Success for most years is not recorded as wins and losses, but rather the growth in your student athletes. The work ethic, the discipline, the lessons learned from adversity and the leadership qualities that are developed with these athletes.

This years 8th grade team achieved all those goals and were also outstanding students, caring classmates, good citizens and a pretty darn good basketball team. They finished the 2019-2020 season with 10 wins and 1 loss. The only blemish to their season was a three point loss to Aplington-Parkersburg, whom they had already won against earlier in the season.

Most of these girls have spent 5 seasons together, though there have been some great additions. Ava Mills and Sydney Schmuncke joined the team two years ago, Brook Johnston and Dacy Powell this year. Each and every one of these girls has made the team fun to coach, and fun to watch play basketball.

I would like to thank the parents for all the hours spent hauling girls to and from practices, games, and tournaments. Thank you for giving them the encouragement when they are frustrated, and that little push to tight through the long and physically challenging season.

sincerely,

Coach Harold Youngblut