The EBF Rocket Boys Basketball team entered the season returning only two letterwinners in Gavin Spaur and Emmett Holohan. Additional players with limited varsity experience were Evan Tague, Logan Kirkpatrick, Daniel Dicks and Teryn Bechtel. These 6 players joined Austin Langstraat, Carter Fisher, Corbin Kirkpatrick and Lucas Roberts as the varsity squad to open the season. With the limited varsity experience and a new head coach in Jason Leffler, the Rockets knew that this year would be a learning experience for all involved.
“One thing our coaching staff has been preaching all year has been, we will win or we will learn, and we talk about this every day. The only way losses beat us is if we refuse to learn anything from them,” Coach Leffler said. “The lesson may be something strategically or something to make us a better teammate, but we’ve learned lots of lessons in the first half of the season.
The Rockets opened the schedule with traditional powerhouse Pella Christian, falling by the score of 78-33. “The score wasn’t indicative of how we competed,” Leffler commented. “The Pella Christian coaching staff and athletic director were very complimentary of how hard our boys played. No matter what the scoreboard said, we continued said, we continued to fight.
Next up was the South Central Conference co-favorite Albia. EBF would fall to the Blue Demons by the score of 76-36 in the home opener. The following Tuesday the Rockets would fall to 0-2 in the conference following a 63-31 loss to Davis County. “At this point in the season, the Bound website had us listed as playing the toughest schedule in the state, all classes, all three schools had yet to lose a game at that point, Albia and Davis County are still unbeaten now, so it was trial by fire for our inexperienced young guys, against some great competition,” according to Coach.
The second road trip of the year was an SCC date with the Cardinal Comets, EBF would battle back from a 12-point half time deficit to have the ball and a chance to tie the game in the last possession and Emmett Holohan got fouled shooting a 3-point shot giving him a chance to tie the score and force overtime if he was to make all three free throws. It wasn’t meant to be however, as the first free throw rimmed out ending the game. “This was the closest we’d come to playing a complete game. The second half gave us a glimpse of how we can play when our minds are right. The second half is the best basketball we have played all year, we still turned the all over too much, which is a lesson we’re still learning, but this showed us how we need to compete,” Coach Leffler said.
The last week before the break saw the Rockets fall to Clarke 61-43, then battle injury and illness on top of their inexperience in lopsided losses to Chariton and Oskaloosa, 74-29 and 79-28.
“The break came at a great time for us, Gavin (Spaur) had missed a game and half with ankle injury, Austin (Langstraat) missed a game due to illness, and Lucas Roberts missed a game with a bad knee. Every one of our pieces is an important piece, so when anybody is out it hurts us. Our team motto this year is play together, fight together, win together. We’re stressing how important everyone is, top player on the roster to the last guy off the bench. That’s how we going to get through this season, together. We have a lot of winnable games after Christmas break and our guys have worked hard on fixing the lessons we’ve learned in the first half, taking care of the basketball, defending better. We have improved since day one, the boys are figuring things out. Our win/loss record can’t define us this year, what needs to define this group is how much improvement from the first day to the last day.”
While the Varsity heads to the break 0-7, the JV1 squad has achieved wins over Cardinal and Clarke and come out of the break with a 2-5 record. JV2 will come out of the break with an 0-6 record but has seen marked improvement since the beginning of the season.
“Before the season, when I talked to the EBF.TV guys, I told them we would need a little patience with this group. The people around the program, the coaching staff, that see the guys every day, have seen improvement, top to bottom at all levels. We compete daily against ourselves doing the same drills every day and we’re getting better every day which hopefully will lead to some more success on the scoreboard in the second half of the season.”
