Over winter break, Olympia boys’ and girls’ varsity basketball had the opportunity to participate in the State Farm Holiday Classic tournament. There were 4 brackets and classifications of games played. Both Olympia teams were in the small school brackets. 64 teams total came to Bloomington-Normal for one of the best basketball tournaments in Illinois. 

All the teams are very good and came in with overall winning records. Thus, the girls were seeded 8th and the boys 13th both out of 16. The boys played fairly well in their games and came out with a record of 2-2. They had advanced their game play from only having one win since the beginning of the season. The girls’ team had tough competition through the tournament coming out with only 1 win and 3 losses. Taylor Nowaskie of Olympia girls’ basketball did earn all-tournament team for small school girls, though. Congratulations to Taylor! 

The first week back at school for this semester involved all sports competitions rolling again. Monday, the freshman boys’ basketball team had an away game at Lincoln High School. 

Then, JV and varsity boys had a game vs Maroa-Forsyth at home on Tuesday. The JV boys won with a final score of 45-33. The varsity team was down by a decent amount most of the game but, came back in the final minutes for a loss of only 48-49. They had a few games canceled, too, throughout the week, including a tournament. Friday night, they were able to travel to Tolono for JV and varsity games. Varsity lost 34-41. 

On the girls’ basketball side of things, sickness and Covid-19 have affected the players. The first day back to practice only consisted of 14 players from all three levels. Wednesday, their freshman team went to Bloomington High School, so they had to bring down sophomores to have enough players to fulfill a team. Even with very few subs on the bench, Olympia still won 35-13. The girls’ home game vs East Peoria was also canceled due to Covid protocols for East Peoria. 

 The wrestling team traveled to Tremont for a meet with Clinton and U-High too on Tuesday. They then went to the Princeton Invitational for a two-day meet on Friday and Saturday. The boys’ swim team also competed in their first meet in a while. They were swimming at Peoria Richwoods in the Manual Rams Relays.