The Huhtamaki basketball tournament was a big success for DHS, with the girls’ team winning the championship, and the boys winning runner up.

Girls’ head coach Ryan Robie believes that the tournament was a success because of how the girls performed defensively during the tournament.

“Our ladies did a tremendous job of accepting the challenge of executing our game plan and playing with great defensive energy,” Robie said. “All year, we have said we want to establish ourselves as a defensively tough team and we showed we are capable of being that against a great program from the Missouri side in Truman.”

Junior Jared Baruth appreciated that there were many teams that challenged the boys.

“The basketball tournament was great. [There was a] full range of teams. We got a lot of good challenges out of it,” Baruth said.

The girls prepared for the tournament by watching how the teams they went against played.

“We prepared by practicing a lot and watching film over the teams we played …so we would be prepared for the game,” senior Madison Plake said.

The boys went through a similar process to make sure they were prepared for the tournament.

“We prepared by focusing on we could do best and executing that,” Baruth said.

Even though they did well, the teams are still improving in an attempt to become formidable competition throughout the season.

“We can build on this experience by looking at what we did good and what we can improve on,” Baruth said. “The team has a lot of room for improvement. The tournament just scratched the surface on how good we can be.”

Robie thinks that the girls are just getting started as well.

“We are just scratching the surface of what we can be. I hope that we are able to take the time over winter break to clean up some little things both offensively and defensively,” Robie said. “In addition, we have some young kids that once they get it figured out, could really provide our roster with some much needed depth.”