OHS Journalism
by Willow Hochstedler
Our Onaga Junior High Basketball teams have been working extremely hard. Girls head coach Kelly VanDonge and assistant coach Sarah Krause have been working hard to prepare their team for the OTL tournament and their season overall. The middle school girls' basketball team has a total of 7 wins and 9 losses, four of which were league wins and six of which were league losses. The OTL tournament consisted of teams such as Centralia, Doniphan West, Frankfort, SPPS, Axtell, and your Onaga buffaloes. Assistant coach Sarah Krause said "This group of girls improved from last season winning more games and earning a 4th seed in the OTL tournament.” Thursday, January 30th the Buffaloes played the first round coming in as the number four seed against the Frankfort Wildcats who were placed at the number five spot.
After defeating the Wildcats, the girls moved on to the semifinals to play Centralia that upcoming Monday. Sadly, the Lady Buffaloes fell short to the Panthers. Assistant coach Sarah Krause displayed her thoughts about the next round by saying "We're definitely hoping and preparing to finish the season in the OTL tournament by winning 3rd place. SPPS has beaten us twice, but we are playing our best basketball and going to finish the season Buffalo strong!" The girls played Thursday against the number three seed St. Peter & Paul. The Lady Buffaloes ended the tournament placing 4th with an unfortunate loss.
Our middle school boys’ basketball team had a total of 12 wins and 2 losses heading into the OTL Tournament, 8 of which were league wins and both losses were league losses. The boys got off to a rough start by losing their first two games of the season, but rode a high ever since, winning their next 12 games of the regular season. Before the boys played in the championship game of the tournament, head coach Adam Kufahl said "We started off this season with high expectations from the coaches and players, and we had some goals from day one that we wanted to achieve. We knew our first two games would be the toughest two teams we played and we got off to a rough start going 0-2 to start the year against Frankfort and Doniphan West, but we have a great group of kids and they just kept working, never losing sight of those goals. We came back and beat both of them later in the season and haven't lost since the middle of November. Their hard work, buy-in, and their belief in themselves has been the reason for that."
The boys’ OTL bracket consisted of the same six competitive teams. The Buffs entered as the #2 seed, earning a bye in the first round. Monday night of the tournament they competed against Frankfort, the number three seed. It was a close game, but the boys worked hard until the very last minute and pulled off a 36-30 win. The next game the following Thursday was the championship match. Coach Adam Kufahl referred to their opponents, the Mustangs, as “one of the best teams I've seen in junior high basketball in my seven years here; they've only had one game this season that they didn't win by double digits, but that was their one loss, and that loss was to us so we feel like we have a great chance.” This would have been the first time the middle school boys would’ve won an OTL championship in over 30 years, and they were looking forward to that challenge. The fans at the game were absolutely wild! With an unfortunate loss, the Buffs came out with a second-place finish.
Congratulations to both middle school basketball teams. The future is looking bright.