What to Expect with the House Basketball Season Ramping Up

Mrs. Boggess in the Dean’s den

Photo by Zach Carty

The House System here at Moeller is in the middle of another glorious basketball season as the House Cup is coming down to the wire. Right now, the house standings are Quiroga (1st) with 37.2 points, Eveslage (2nd) with 35.6 points, Pillar (3rd) with 32.5 points, Zaragoza (4th) with 30.8 points, Trinity (5th) with 26.8 points, and Zehler (6th) with 21.1 points as some houses are hoping for a good basketball season.

House Basketball features some absolute stud basketball players this year like Dom Breidenbach, Reece Schmidt, Jared Merk, and many others as the houses are filled with basketball talent. As far as Mr. John Hough, Quiroga House Dean, remembers this has been a house event that has been a pivotal event since the start of the house system back in 2005. It has always been a competitive event in the House Cup.

Mrs. Jennifer Boggess, Zaragoza House Dean, said, "I remember my first year when I came here, I was like what is this?" Coming from an all-girls school, Boggess said she had never seen the competitiveness the boys displayed for an intramural sport.

This year it’s a discussion on who has a chance to win. Many houses this year have a chance to become champions. Eveslage Sophomore, Vinny Reno stated, "I think I am going to put my money on Quiroga. I think they are going to go back-to-back." Even with Quiroga winning the House Basketball Championship in 2021, he still has high hopes for his own Eveslage House as he knows they will be competing for a top spot.

Mr. Hough at his desk in the Dean’s den

Photo by Zach Carty

However, Mr. Hough and Mrs. Boggess believe that Pillar is a favorite as they have a loaded squad this year featuring players like Ryan Benne, Tony Arnold, or Carter Yox as all three have been a part of the Moeller Basketball program. Even with Hough believing Pillar are the favorites, he is still quite the optimistic person as he stated, "anything can happen you know. That’s why we play the game!". Someone like Trinity House can sneak up out of nowhere with Jared Merk and win it all maybe but who knows.

Defending champs Quiroga house, are hoping to repeat, however that is going to be tough this year. Mr. Hough, who has been Quiroga house dean for the past five years, was happy with how he has players like sophomore Jordan Marshall and Freshman Zion Theophilus, but he knows it will hurt missing seniors Yoro Diallo and Rayn Hassane. Mr. Hough stated, "Of course that’s going to hurt, but we fully expect the next man up mentality to kick in and the Roga's to do well as they always do." Mr. Hough is staying optimistic as he believes they still have plenty of talent.

Even with all the talent on the display some people wish they could see it. Some kids not on the House teams hear about the hype about some of the matchups in the gym and they want to watch and cheer them on. Unfortunately, students aren’t allowed to watch the games during mentor group or M-block. There is good reason for this however!

Hough and Boggess both weighed in on the problem stating that all the adults in the gym during the house games have jobs they need to be doing for the games. Some of them may be a ref, or keeping track of the score, and that leaves no one to facilitate extra students. Hough said, "Keeping track of guys on the sideline as you know, that is it’s own job." If more kids were in the gym while the games were going on, that would make it hard to make sure the games were running smoothly. Even if they did allow students to come watch they would have to pull out the bleachers so that they could fit everyone, but that would mean only one game would be going at once. It’s been discussed to somehow stream all the games. It would allow for two games at once and no extra students.

This year students can watch the house basketball championship, as well as the seniors vs. faculty game, in the gym. A little bit of normalcy is coming back to Moeller, as the faculty game could once again see Mr. Jerry DiCristoforo getting his ankles broken live and in person.