Maquoketa Basketball Team

The Cardinals are off to a 10-0 start, which is the best start to a season in program history. Head Coach Chad Specht is in his second season with the team and since he’s joined the program Maquoketa finished last season 20-4.

Coach Specht said,

“This group is pretty much the same group as last year, minus three seniors, three very valuable seniors. So going into the off season, and before the beginning of this season, we had to figure out how we’re going to put this together, and we’re still doing that day by day, but to their credit, they’ve done a nice job up to this point. We still have a long way to go, but what I tell them is, we don’t worry about what’s ahead. We don’t worry about what’s behind. Let’s just win today, and we win one day at a time, and stack them up, and good things happen. Learning how to deal with adversity, learning how to deal in situations that may not be positive to them,” said Specht. “So it’s real easy when things are going well. We needed to figure out when things aren’t going well or they’re not basically the ball’s not bouncing the way we want it to.”

“The junior class has like, grown up together since second, third grade, and we’ve played together since then,” said Justice Armbruster, Cardinals Junior. “We really do love our seniors. They like, help us and they mentor us. So like, I feel like as a team, we’re really close, and like, just this season, we’re getting closer together as it continues.”

“We do have rough times, but we are always trying to stick together,” said Finley Star, Cardinals Senior. “I mean, we’re playing as a team. They’ve been playing together forever, and it’s just, I don’t know, I smile every time I watch them go out there, because it just makes me have joy watching them play together.”

“We all have our roles, like we all have our roles as a team and what we’re supposed to contribute,” said Maelyn Kluever, Cardinals Junior. “So I think everyone’s just been succeeding in that role and just doing their part, just like we want to go all the way, so we’re just working hard to that every single day.”

Maquoketa will visit Camanche on Jan. 14 at 6:15 p.m.