The boys JV basketball team traveled to Ashburnham, Massachusetts to play against the Cushing Academy Varsity B team in our first away game of the season. Although several players were only able to participate in warm ups, we had our full team together on a court for the first time since returning from the Winter break. The positive energy of just being together again was probably the highlight of the day. Cushing came out in a 1-3-1 defense which we had seen against Worcester and we responded much better. Our half court defense played well too, but we struggled to keep Worcester to only one shot. That, coupled with too many turnovers gave Worcester a 17-28 advantage at the half. We came out playing well at the beginning of the second half and were able to get the score within 6-8 points and it felt like we were going to get closer with about 6 minutes to play. The game got very scrappy at this point and Cushing pulled away as we were forced by the clock to take quicker shots and play some riskier defense. The end score, 42-55 doesn’t represent the close feel of the game, especially the second half, but Cushing certainly deserved the victory in the end. Kiernan Keller ‘22 led us in scoring with 10, all scored in the second half. While the score was not what we wanted, we showed significant improvement as a team and we’re hoping this is the game we can point back to at the end of the season and say “That is where we started our positive momentum.” We’re looking forward to getting back in the practice gym over the next two days to prepare for traveling to Andover this Saturday and taking on another challenging team.