The boys basketball team went to Crane high school to compete in the christmas tournament during the break, which was through December 26th-December 30th. The team went 2-3 in the tournament losing in the semi-finals to Collins by 20 points.

“We could’ve played more courageous and better as a team,” said Junior Gregory Boyle.

They played some good teams such as Collins, Harlan, Fenger, and Richards because they work hard and they are in the white, red and blue conference. The red conference is the best, the white is the 2nd best and blue is the 3rd best. Phoenix was the only team in the tournament that was in the green conference which is the lowest conference in basketball and so they wasn’t expected to make it as far as they did because of the past seasons they’ve had.

“This tournament was unorganized because sometimes we’ll have 3 games in one day and one game on a another day, so we had to deal with a lot of fatigue,” said Boyle.

The team had to deal with being fatigued because of all the back to back games they had to play in one day. They had 5 games in a span of 2 days which was very tiring for the players and coaches.

“I think I could’ve played more as a leader and I could’ve talked more on the court,” said Boyle.

Boyle wanted to be more of a vocal leader he explained, because he didn’t want his teammates nervous while playing some of the toughest schools on the west side of Chicago.