Senior Elijah Martinez, sophomore Gatlin Brody and senior Isaiah Hunter describe how having fewer seniors on the team will impact their season. 

“I feel like the bond and chemistry was like a lot, and I feel like it will have to be rebuilt between all of us because none of us has played together,” Martinez said. 

In addition, Brody mentioned that the amount of leadership on the team has decreased. 

“It’s definitely going to hurt, because they kind of lead the team, and they told us how to do stuff and lead us, and kinda proved how to act and how to do stuff,” Brody said. 

Even though the chemistry and the leadership of the team has changed, Brody was confident that they would still have a good season. 

“I think it will be fine, it’ll be easy to grow, cause of the young team. We’re just gonna have to fight through playing against older guys,” Brody said. 

Hunter had similar confidence in regard to their team’s success. 

“Well we did lose a lot of players, but I feel like we’ll still be good, I feel like we’ll still be over .500 and get pretty far in the playoffs,” Hunter said. 

With every drawback, there are also benefits of having fewer seniors. 

“Benefits is just seeing new guys, seeing new guys that came from like– that are sophomores and juniors come up and compete,” Hunter said. 

For underclassmen like Brody, the benefit is bringing younger guys into varsity. 

“You get to bring up– for me I get to bring up a lot of my guys from the freshman team and I get to play with them,” Brody said. 

There are a lot of things that the team is excited about for this upcoming season. Hunter shares his excitement as the games get closer.

“Just traveling, to like Joplin and St. Louis and then just playing our last year you know, with the seniors and having fun,” Hunter said. 

For Martinez, he is excited to play with his teammates for the first time. 

“And our first game is going to be a big test. So it’s going to be pretty good,” Martinez said. 

As the start of games is getting closer, each teammate has made goals for their season. 

“Just to compete and try to win as much as we can, and grow as a team together. Just to get better before next season,” Brody said.