The Fair Grove Junior Varsity Boys Basketball Team is in the middle of their season and are continuing to practice and prepare for the rest of the upcoming games and build up a program for the younger players.
Junior Varsity Basketball Coach and Cross Country Coach Jalen Supancic said, “Our junior varsity team this year consists of around 15 kids. This also includes a group of freshmen that play in freshmen games throughout the season.” The team had their first game on December 10th, 2024 against Bolivar High School.
The junior varsity team has after school practices every day that go until 5:30 and sometimes even practice on the weekends.
Basketball player Aedan Goins (11) explained, “We have practices every weekday that we don’t have a game and sometimes the occasional weekend practice. In practice we go over a lot of our plays that we run in the game and we do a lot of shooting.”
The goal of practices is to improve all parts of the team. Supancic explained, “We will typically break up and practice Varsity and JV on separate ends of the gym for a while each practice, then come together at the end and scrimmage against each other while working on plays, sets, and different defenses.”
Skyler Todd (11) is a player on the junior varsity team. This year is Todd’s first full year playing basketball at Fair Grove. Todd stated, “My goal in basketball is to do the best I can do and help my teammates to also achieve their best.”
Supancic stated how many of the JV players from last year moved to varsity, “Last year our JV team finished 18-1 and only lost the first game of the season. Many of last year’s players now play on the varsity team.”
Supancic added, “This year’s team is a new look from the JV team that competed last year. These kids work hard and compete every day in practice, and they have been learning how to play at the high school level as well. We have several freshmen that play big minutes at the junior varsity level so just getting them adjusted to high school basketball and competing with them has been fun so far.”
The goal of the junior varsity basketball team is to prepare players for higher levels of play. Supancic said, “Almost every JV program is working to get athletes playing time so that they can step right in and compete when seniors graduate or when the time is needed and they are called upon. We have several freshmen that play big minutes at the junior varsity level so just getting them adjusted to high school basketball and competing with them has been fun so far.”
