Girls basketball

For months, the young Monarchs of Damien have lived the grind and grit life. The Damien girls basketball team worked out through the early stages of this strange and unfamiliar pandemic life once the first lockdown ended. Summer arrived and they kept working like a machine with workouts that included ballhandling, drives, jumpers, box jumps, weight training. The potential for success, even in a rugged ILH universe, was real. It still is, even after the league cancelled five winter sports […]

In the three-plus decades Chico Furtado has coached basketball, nothing has brought him to conflicting emotions like the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement by the ILH on Monday that its girls basketball season is being cancelled became one of the lowest points of 2020 for Furtado. Less than a week ago, he attended the funeral of a friend who he coached with years ago. Cause of death: coronavirus. “He’s younger than I am and it took his life. I know first […]

From Zoom workouts to in-person reps, Kyle Pape and the girls teams of PROformance have worked through the COVID-19 pandemic. No games. No scrimmages. Just drill after drill. Then, Pape and co-coach Derrick Low learned about an international skills competition. Alan Walls, the director of United Nations of Basketball — and a St. Anthony graduate — is someone Pape and Low could count on. They weren’t disappointed. PROformance won the 17-under competition of the World Team Skills Championships against a […]