2009-2010 News

Cats' Summer Travels

   The Cambridge Bobcats had a very good summer playing in numerous shootouts and team camps in addition to the play in their own league.  At the Cambridge/Buckeye Trail Summer League, the Cats fared well in regular season play and made it to the semi-finals in their own tournament before bowing out by one point to Newark Catholic, a team that made it to the Regionals last season and also a team that returns a vast majority of their players from last season.  Newark Catholic went on to win the tournament over Zanesville Rosecrans by 15 in the championship game.

The team took part in two shootouts and two team camps, and from the beginning to the end, the team made vast improvements in team play and in getting to know what will be almost a brand new team from last year's Regional Finalist squad that lost to state semi-finalist, Logan Elm at the Convocation Center in Athens.  Cambridge graduated six seniors from that team, Shayne Leggett, Thomas Norris, Taylor Leppla, Luke LePage, Winston Turner, and Ben Sheperd.  Travelling with the team this summer were seniors Ryan Hatmaker, Ryan Jamiel, and Kyle Cox with juniors Benny Van Dyne, David Evancho, Jake Yanico, Dakota Taylor, Austin Wilkinson and sophomore, RyLee Rogers. 

   The Cats' first shootout for the summer was at Marietta College where the team went .500 but started to show signs of gelling more as a new team.  At the Denison Shootout, the team, while coming together showed some definite signs of more determined and confident play that took us into our two team camps.  The first camp attended was at The University of Pittsburgh.  While there, Cambridge went up against some very good competition.  Teams that the Cats played came from suburban Pittsburgh, suburban Philadelphia, Ohio, Maryland and New York.  It was a great experience, and our young team fared very well against some great teams and some very good individual play.  The best thing that came from our experience there is the confidence the team began displaying as they went up against and defeated some of these mega-schools from the Northeast.  The team came away from Pittsburgh with a good sense of the growth that the team had made to that point.  Our final destination was to Capital University in Columbus, where, again, the team played as well as they had all summer.  Getting away from Cambridge and staying at different locations allowed the players on this new team to really start to bond and get to know each other better as teammates - something that is worth its weight in gold during the summer months.

   Most all of these players are now enjoying fall sports, and the coaching staff would like to wish them the best of luck in their endeavors.  The more success that is enjoyed in their fall sports can only serve to build individual confidence levels as they make their way toward the first basketball practice in November.