Ocoee Middle basketball returns home

The famous “Wizard of Oz” quotation, “There’s no place like home,” rings especially true for the members of the boys and girls basketball teams at Ocoee Middle School.

After last playing in their own gym in February 2018, the basketball teams finally got the chance to play in front of a loud home crowd on the Ocoee Middle campus Wednesday, Jan. 22.

It was everything both teams had dreamed it would be.

“It gets us more excited, because all of our friends can come and then we are in our gym where we practice at,” eighth-grader Elisabeth Thomas said. “It lessens the nerves a lot.”

“I was nervous, but going through the motions, things got easier after five seconds into the game,” eighth-grader Zariah Hercule said. “I just imagined myself at practice and blocked the crowd out. I had fun tonight.”

Over the last several years, there had been a lot of questions about the school’s gym and whether updates would be made to the aging facility. The lights that had been in the gym were from the 1970s, and the court began to rot because of a leaky roof. 

The issues that kept mounting finally required renovations to begin during the 2019 season. That meant the basketball programs had to find a temporary place to play. The Cardinals played their games over at Ocoee High School, which proved to be a challenge, said boys head coach Wallace Phillips.

“One of the biggest deals about that, believe it or not, is getting kids from the middle school to the high school,” Phillips said. “We didn’t have the opportunity for them to eat food, (and) we couldn’t get there early to practice, because they were already having their own practice. We couldn’t get parents to have the same level of involvement, because they now had to travel to a whole other place — to travel over there was a whole other logistics nightmare.”

That all changed last week.

A completely new lighting system takes the place of the decades-old dangling lights, and the new court sparkles under them. There were other  adjustments, as well, such as the replacing of the hand-cranked windows that used to sit high in the gym, while the gym’s roof was also replaced.

Both programs are happy to finally be back home where they belong, said Marcus Spencer, who serves as the girls basketball coach and athletic coordinator.

“For our student body, I just think as a school that’s where you can bring in the camaraderie and the excitement to your school,” Spencer said. “You see we have a lot of fans here, and ex-students came back because they had been waiting on this project when they were here. Being able to walk into your own gym is almost like sleeping in your own bed.”

Both the boys and girls teams made themselves right at home pretty quickly, as the girls (1-0) dominated Meadowbrook 24-5, while the boys (1-0) took an early lead and used a strong second half to beat Meadowbrook 33-18.

The wins were a good way to start off the season, but expect more to come this season, said eighth-graders Kendall Little and Ezekiel Brinson.

“I’m pretty confident in our team, because we have a pretty solid team this year, and I’m ready to play,” Kendall said.

“I feel like we can matchup with anybody in this district,” Brinson said. “And I feel like we’ll go far.”