The Westerville North basketball team has reloaded, silencing critics after preseason rankings. The loss of three key players who committed to play in college led to some doubts. As a result, preseason rankings had the Warriors ranked as high as top five while others had them lower.
However, the team started the season off strong winning five in a row then lost by two to Lutheran East D5 state champions. Since then, they have been on an eight game winning streak. The Warriors took care of business by beating Westerville South for the second time this season.
The team came out beating St. Ignatius by 18, redeeming themselves from their loss last year. Elijah McCree (‘26) had a career high of seven three pointers during the game.
Nate Roman (‘26) has grown compared to last season and took on a leadership role. He says. “I have been going to practice everyday and pushing myself. We have obviously made some changes to the team, so that increased my role.”
Some players have balanced football and basketball, like Damion King (‘27) and Desmond Okantey (‘26). Both improved this year with King starting and Okantey improving his playing time by a lot. “I’ve gotten stronger and I feel like that has translated from football to basketball and making my presence known and be felt on the court’’ said Okantey.
Tony Cornett lll (‘27) has started on varsity the last two of three years he’s been at Westerville North. Tony talks about the effect of losing three players from last season saying “I feel like it had a positive effect on us, I feel like it made us work harder over the off season and prepare for the next season.”
This team has been showing their dominance even with the loss of players. Their perseverance is showing and new leadership is shining through. “ The younger guys always learn from the older guys so it’s kind of a tradition that gets passed down from one class to another” further adding “this senior class has really stepped up and done a good job leading.” said head coach Shan Trusley.
Knowing that they had to step up, they kept the momentum going. Damion King (‘27 ) “ we knew after winning states , we were going to have people wanting us to fail , so we had to work harder so we could succeed on the same level again.” said by Damion King.
