For most high school basketball teams, their dream is to make it to the state basketball tournament to end their season. For the Yutan boy’s basketball team, this dream became a reality for the first time in four years.

“We really hadn’t made the state tournament in four years, so we really just wanted to get down to Lincoln and win a district title,” senior AJ Arensberg said.

To reach this goal, the team focused hard at every practice to improve in games.

“We as coaches always say our goals are to overachieve and reach our potential as a team. I think we tried to do some things that gave us an advantage. Some of the drills and the standard of how we do those drills made the games easier for them,” head coach Jesse Gardner said.

This focus in practice also helped at the beginning of the season, when the team was able to have many successful games against tough opponents, like Ashland-Greenwood, Concordia and D.C. West. 

“My favorite game was Ashland because they’re the state champs in C1, and we ended up winning, so that’s pretty cool,” junior Carson Jurey said. 

When in a game, the team utilized their work ethic from hard practices to outperform tough teams in the final moments of games.

“In the fourth quarter, I felt like the other team was way more tired than we were, and we were in way better shape,” sophomore Ryan Maguire said.

After having a successful beginning, the team made sure to bond both in and out of practice to perform well together on the court. 

“Even on our off days, we went out to eat and created that chemistry,” senior Tyler Witt said. “We were closer together. We were with each other a lot more, so on the basketball court, it just felt like we were playing for each other, not just ourselves.”

The successful season gave the team the honor of hosting sub-districts, where they defeated Shelby-Rising City 53-22 and Oakland-Craig 35-30.

“I’ve never seen the gym so packed and loaded for subdistrict games. It was a really cool environment to host those games,” Arensberg said.

The team then hosted the district final as the second seed against Alma. This game was back and forth in scoring for the first three quarters, but Yutan pulled away in the fourth quarter to win 42-36 and qualify for state.

“Playing the district final here at home, in front of our fans, was a lot of fun. I think that whole experience for them was fun,” Gardner said. 

After winning their district final, the team had over a week to prepare for the state tournament in Lincoln for the first time in four years.

“We kind of went back to the fundamentals of what you do early in the season. We had a week and a half off before state. We spent time in the classroom talking about what concerns they have,” Gardner said.

While they felt well-prepared, the team ended their season in the first round of state against West Holt 33-48. 

“In our state game, we knew we had to play perfectly. They made mistakes, too; we just made more mistakes and didn’t play well during crunch time. They out-rebounded us, they shot better than us and overall they just wanted it more,” Witt said. 

While the experience in the Bob Devaney Center was cut short, they were able to have many memories that the team will remember for a lifetime.

“For coaches and players, our goal was to make it back there, and we finally did it,” Jurey said. “It didn’t turn out the way we wanted, but being at Devaney and seeing the whole town of Yutan behind us was such a surreal experience.”