Running suicides back and forth across the court, putting up shots endlessly, and doing more drills than one can even count. Putting in all the hard work is what the Urbana Basketball team did every day leading up to their games, and it worked well too, looking back at the season where they went 15-9. They did end up getting knocked out of the playoffs at Gaithersburg, but only after a hard-fought and impressive season.

“The season went great” Junior, Aaron Humes told me, “Better than expected.” They finished the regular season going 13-8 which was a drastic improvement to last year’s regular season  record of 5-16. It was the first winning season for Urbana in the last seven years, Coach David Crawmer commented saying that “it pushed the program to new limits.” Coach credited the successes of this season to: the shared motivation in the players, the connections between the players, and the better practices. He felt like “the players who didn’t play a lot were “incredible pushing the starters during practice,” and that there was no turmoil on the team this year. Junior, Kaden Swing added, “We played together this year rather than individually and that is the key to success.” Throughout the season there were so many close games and chilling moments to look back upon. Some heartbreakers and some amazing memories. When asked about his favorite part of the season, Coach Crawmer brought up the stretch where we got wins against rivals: Linganore, Thomas Jefferson, and Oakdale, and how special that was. Nevertheless, there were still some heartbreaking moments like the two close losses against Tuscarora and the losses against Frederick. Even through those tough moments, they were still able to fight through adversity and carry on the great season, leading them to the playoffs. 

Obviously during the playoffs, everything is so amplified for the players. They went into the games more excited, yet more nervous, and with more on the line, just like every other team did; which set the scene for some amazing and tense games. Junior Jared Huesby expressed his feelings about the playoffs saying he “felt like the playoffs went good, but not how we expected.” Urbana started the playoffs with a thrilling win against Quince Orchard and then beat Seneca Valley at their home court. Arguably the most memorable moments of the entire season came in that game against Quince Orchard, where Jude Huesby had a putback buzzer-beater to get Urbana the win 65-64. Sadly they were bested in the 3rd game of the playoffs where they faced off against Gaithersburg, and just couldn’t get anything going. Jared Huesby said, “Losing in the regional finals sucked, we weren’t mentally prepared.” They played Gaithersburg really close throughout the first half and through most of the third quarter before the game got away from them. Coach Crawmer said that the three Gaithersburg made at the end of the third quarter to expand the lead to 13 was the breaking point, and said that the players had a hard time recovering from that. The loss was so heartbreaking, especially because it didn’t seem characteristic of this team to go out like that, but that’s just how it goes, one bad game is all you need. 

Going into next year the expectations aren’t going to drop, Jared Huesby said his expectations for the next year’s team are high, “We might not have the skill we did this year but we have the heart, in my book it’s always heart over height.” “Losing one of the best players in the county with Jude will be difficult to come back from,” said Coach Crawmer “but what we did this year […] we can build off this.” We are going to be losing two seniors, Jude Huesby and Youssef Ali, both being large contributors to this year’s team. With that being said, Aaron Humes still has high expectations saying, “I hope to exceed all doubts despite losing our two seniors.” Kaden Swing expressed how he felt it was important to “gain chemistry quickly with the new guys and play together” next year. Now it’s too early to have any goals or predictions for next year’s team, with the entire offseason ahead of us but the players’ expectations aren’t going anywhere.

There were a ton of positives this season, like how the team fought together every game with strong resilience and loyalty between each other. They improved so much from last year’s team and showed a lot of promise for the future. They definitely surpassed a lot of expectations, made all the fans proud, and like Aaron Humes said, “We’re gonna bounce back next year.”

https://www.maxpreps.com/md/ijamsville/urbana-hawks/basketball/schedule/