Basketball Season

Basketball season is just around the corner. MHSAA prohibits us from practicing until the 17th of November. The girls are able to start practicing on the 10th of November. The boys went through a week of conditioning before they could start regular practice. This conditioning was hard – with a lot of sprints, but will be well worth it when the team is in shape.

The girls started practice on the 10th and it appeared to have gone well. Coach Richards will work the girls hard in order to improve as a team and have another great season. The girls came off a trip to regional finals last year. They lost to the state champions. The girls lost 3 solid players to graduation: Brianna Zehr, Sophia Zelenka, and Becca Wolfis. Our athletes have all worked very hard in the off-season in order to make up for these lost players and hopefully go far in playoffs.

The boys also lost a key player with Michael Warren. Mike was a solid overall player, averaging 27 points a game. The other boys are all still young, but have improved and grown a lot as players. Since Mike was the only senior last year on the very young Calvary team, we have 8 returning varsity players as well some new players who are getting into basketball.

The boys also encountered another big change to their team. Coach Jim Warren, the previous coach, has resigned from coaching the boys team in order to watch his son Michael, play college basketball at Grace College. We are all very gracious that Matt Payton, has stepped up. Mr. Payton played college basketball and coached the Calvary Middle School team last year. His son, Ililo, has also joined the team.

We are expecting great boys and girls basketball seasons here at Calvary. 

Will Dukes, Junior

Fall Party 2014

Friday afternoon, the high school students were released early for the fall party, “Don’t worry, be Hippee!” Everyone was looking groovy in their 70’s outfits. Soon after taking a countless pictures, it was time to get on the bus. The first stop? The 3 Mile Project!

We headed to Grand Rapids and we excitedly got off the bus; not quite sure what fun we were in for! The 3 Mile project is a huge building that was full of so many awesome things to do! We soon found octaball, movies, basketball, volleyball, videogames, food, and reball.

Reball was definitely the most popular activity of the night. It is similar to paintball except that the paintball marker shoots a small rubber ball, instead of the standard paintball. Since reball is more commonly played in close quarters, the velocity the marker fires at is also turned down. Does it hurt more than paintball? Not really… It only hurts if you get shot close up; you are more likely to end up with a bruise rather than a welt. The game is played with two teams on either side, and the goal is to eliminate the opposing team. It is played for three to four fast paced rounds. The field that we played on had small inflatable bunkers. The first game was a ton of fun!! It was all the guys that usually play airsoft with Ryan Cashler against anyone brave enough to take them on. The airsoft guys lost the first round when their strategy failed, but dominated the last two rounds, winning the game! However, they were not even close to being the ultimate players that night. The best by far, were definitely Mr. Langdon and Mr. Payton. Their strategy was to run around in a crazy manor and blast people with reballs. It worked!
After all of the activities at the 3 Mile Project, the high school again loaded up onto the buses and we were headed off to That 70’s Dough. When we arrived at the restaurant, we all ate pizza and ice cream. We even got a few weird stares from people because of our crazy outfits! One of our buses had broken down as we were eating, so on our last bus ride back to school, we had to fit the entire high school on one bus!

As we arrived back to school, everyone was pleased to see all the 70’s themed decorations and snacks that had been set up. Everyone met up in the chapel and we learned how to do a dance called the Hustle. (It’s harder than it looks) Then, all the classes sat down in groups and we played Minute to Win it. After, we played a game called President, where each class had to pick a person to be their president to hide somewhere. If your class president was found, your class had to help the class that had found your president. The sophomores ended up winning the game and they were the overall winners for the games for the night. After all of the hustle of the games and activities, everyone got snacks, got a beanbag and sat down to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Overall, the Fall Party was a blast; the seniors did a great job planning it. I cannot wait for my class to plan our Fall Party next year!

- William Lipscombe and Lauren Hutchison, Juniors

Varsity Conference Tournament

The Varsity girls started off our day with a team meal at Bob Evans to get pumped for our game…even though some people ate too much it was still a time of team bonding and laughter.

For our first tournament game our ladies played Heritage (who we had lost to in the regular season). We easily beat Heritage in two games, so we were pumped and ready for the rest of the tournament.

Next, we played Zion Christian. we knew this was going to be a tough match for us. Zion won the first game but our ladies were not going to give up. We came back and won the second game. We fought hard but ended up losing the third game. Since this was a double elimination tournament we couldn’t lose anymore matches or else we were done.

So we played Potter’s house and lost the first game but fought hard and won the second game. Setter, Britney Zehr, got hurt and had to come out of the game. So 8th grader, Audrey Verekee had to step up and set for our team. We came out and won the third game easily!
Next we had to play Calvary Holland who we lost to in the regular season. They are a tough team and we knew we would have to play at the top of our game to beat them. Calvary Holland won the first game and even though our ladies fought hard we lost the second game as well.

Even though we didn’t win the tournament we played very well together and ended up in fourth place.

Kyleah Sutherland, Sophomore