By Taylor Wouters ’15 | Staff Writer

Back to back Breslin. This is what I had to look forward to when I walked into my first varsity basketball practice.

Although I had been playing basketball since I was eight years old, I had never been as nervous as I was on that first day of practice. Throughout the summer, my soon to be team and I spent many hours conditioning both in the gym and in the weight room. However, I was still worried that I wouldn’t be ready in time for the season.

As expected, I was still extremely out of shape as far as my coach’s standards. The first couple of days I had trouble catching my breath doing drills that I now no longer break a sweat over. After I started adjusting to these drills there came the real challenge: sprints.

Our coach seemed to have a playbook for sprints in his back pocket, always coming up with new ways to torture us. We ran suicides, down and backs, ladders and many more other conditioning drills. As a team we dreaded hearing the words “on the line”. The groans were heard as we took our place in line next to our teammates.

For the first couple of weeks I kept asking myself why all the soreness and exhaustion was worth it. I didn’t enjoy running suicides every day, or ending the practice feeling sick. Then it hit me: back to back Breslin.

The team I’m now on didn’t go to the state championships two years in a row because they spent two hours running plays every day. They went because they worked hard. The sprints helped us to get in shape for grueling games when we would be running almost nonstop. As a result, we were in much better shape than most of our opponents, making it easier to win games.

When I realized why running all the sprints was necessary, they lost some of their horror. Although I still dread sprinting up and down what seems to be an unusually long court, I know it’s because our team doesn’t want to be the state runner-ups this year, but the state champions.

I might not play in every game, but being a part of the team is still something that I am extremely proud of. So for the next couple of months, you can find me in the gym working with my team, because this year we are going back to back to back Breslin.