Transition troubles

The official start to the Missouri State High School Athletic Association boys’ basketball season was Nov. 2. The official end to the football season was Nov. 27. But, because KHS’ football teams have been so strong in recent years, the basketball team’s unofficial start is in early December. This leaves boys’ varsity basketball head coach Bill Gunn and his staff little time to prepare for the season and an even quicker turn around time for players of both sports.

Anthony Loper, senior, and Isaac Moye, junior, play football and basketball and both have to quickly transition from one to the next. Loper, a wide receiver on the turf and a point guard on the court, said he does not see his shift all that hard mentally, but finds the physical transition more difficult.

“I wouldn’t call [the transition] stressful, but I’m rusty at the start and there’s just a weird feeling,” Loper said. “Basketball and football conditioning are two different things to me and I feel like we need more basketball type conditioning to be ready for the season.”

Even though Loper does not necessarily see himself as exhausted, Gunn does. He sees his players who play football as fatigued and often worn out.

“We absolutely notice that our guys are tired,” Gunn said. “Honestly, we don’t feel like our football guys are truly basketball players [in their conditioning] until January.”

Another aspect of this quick transition is switching from 50 teammates with football to 11 with basketball. Moye, however, feels a connection with the basketball team that the football team does not provide.

“I feel like I bond more with the basketball team rather than football team,” Moye said. “We are a smaller team and we have more time to get to know each other on a personal level.”

According to Gunn, the basketball squad starts team-building activities in the spring and summer months because of the lost time that is attributed to the football season. The team travels and competes out of state in the summer months and took a float trip in central Missouri this past summer to bond even closer as a team.

“I think it’s more important for us to do our team building in the spring and in the summer,” Gunn said. “Once those guys go to football we’ve done some of those preliminary team-building things so when they come back in November and December we’re just trying to reacquaint guys.”

Both the football and basketball seasons are long and both teams have been successful in the past. Gunn sees this as a positive for both teams.

“It’s a unique situation, but it’s a good one,” Gunn said. “We obviously like that our football team is so successful and then those guys come over to us and they bring that winning attitude with them.”