The Norwich Unified Basketball team before their first home game last Monday (Photo by Morgan Golliver)

VESTAL– On Thursday May 12, the Norwich Purple Tornado unified basketball team earned its first win in program history 32-30 against the Vestal Bears. Norwich’s Ryan Smith scored the game-winning basket.

Coach Jess Smith, along with assistant coach Rich Turnbull, is proud to be a part of this amazing program. Smith finished her third year of coaching the Norwich JV girls basketball team and is also a special education teacher at the middle school.

In each practice, Norwich works hard at preparing for games behind Smith’s leadership. Smith works around everyone’s special needs when preparing game plans.

“As for a game plan for coaching this team, I started with the basics. Making sure they can dribble, pass, catch, and shoot. We talked about the rules and how to substitute in and out of a game,” Smith said. “ We have been talking about teamwork and sportsmanship. What that looks like and how we can do it on our team.”

Practices have been limited due to having games on Mondays and Thursdays. But, when they are able to practice, it is a great learning process for the team.

“At this point with games starting, I will go over certain things I see in a game at the next practice or I add on to their knowledge,” Smith said. “For example, I went over a very basic idea of the 2-3 zone so that they have an idea of what to do on defense. We just keep building skills and knowledge as much as possible.”

Norwich is grateful to have an active set of players with partners who are eager to get out on the court everyday to learn and have fun.

The Norwich unified basketball team will host Owego at home this evening (Monday) starting at 5 p.m.