West Linn’s unified basketball played against Wilsonville’s unified basketball team in a particular home game meant to give thanks and highlight the senior players on both West Linn and Wilsonville. After a continuing string of four straight wins during the season, the Wildcats unified basketball team played its last home game this Wednesday where they managed to score another win, after finishing 48 to 37. The game was fantastic to watch as the Wilsonville student section, band, and cheerleading team all showed up to help make the senior night possible.

Being the only senior on the Wilsonville unified team, Bryce Barham– player #59– got most of the crowd’s attention that night. Bryce has been playing 0n the team for nearly 3 years and it really shows, as Bryve was constantly helping the team get the ball by catching most rebounds and passing it swiftly to other players. Bryce’s teamwork is not the only good thing he does, as Bryce’s accuracy with the ball also helped him score 20 points against West Linn’s team. After the game when asked about how long he would like to play for the team as a post-graduate athlete, Bryce said, “40 years.”

The game was ultimately a huge success for Wilsonville and was a great way to start to wind up the season with a final home game win. The team’s excellent performance this season should also be credited to the amazing coaches who run the unified program. Head coach Bryn Card along with assistant coaches Cassie Markstaller, Connor Simmons, and Cameron Kennedy have all done a great job this season preparing the unified team for these games. After this week’s game, we were able to interview one of the aforementioned assistant coaches Connor Simons, about the season, “It’s been really fun, we have gotten a lot better.” Overall there has been some amazing work put into the unified team by both players and coaches and we look forward to seeing the rest of the season as we finish up with some away games.