By Hunter Moore ‘15

It is long past-due for The Warrior to cover one of the most exciting leagues in all of sports: OBGC rec league. Played mostly on Sundays in the Sherwood Main Gym, all types of young men in the Olney area gather together on the basketball court. Eight teams embark on a journey for the prestigious championship and pride.

This league is so competitive that boys’ varsity basketball players are deemed not talented enough to be permitted to play. Some varsity players have to quit because they can’t handle the fast-paced, high-intensity basketball.

       “We may not be the best, and this league is surely not the NBA, but that doesn’t stop us from going 100 percent every game,” said senior Tommy Carswell of Team Sadler. “If you come and watch just one game, you can see that everyone on the floor has pure love for the game. I personally broke my finger in a Sunday game but still showed up the very next Tuesday ready to play. This love and dedication is what has kept OBGC so popular throughout the years,”

When players graduate high school, they are forced into retirement. While some players wish they can come back to the game, only one was successful. Sherwood graduate and former all-star Andrew Monroe has made a return to the league, not as a player but as a coach.        “It’s great being a coach; I get to yell at anyone I want and bench anyone just because I feel like it,” said Monroe. “Coaching makes me realize how much I want to get back in the game to show everyone how it’s done, but I’m too old.”

Defending champions, Team Widmair, already have shown this season that they are dominant again, losing only to Team Weiskopf. Last year, Team Widmair was expected to lose in the championship but proved their haters wrong. This year they are expected to win because of their almost identical team along with their recruitment of former street-ball star Josh “Ziggy” Popkin.

Although the league is predominantly Sherwood students, there are other school student involved and “OBGC wants to expand the high school league to get more teams from Sherwood, Magruder and Blake to have a place for non-varsity athletes to play in a fun yet competitive environment,” said Ken Bradford, Comissioner of OBGC rec league.         The season is in full swing and the playoffs are right around the corner; it’s exciting to see how it all will turn out in this 2014 OBGC rec league season.