After a summer filled with sweat, repetition, and plenty of work in the weight room, the Van Buren Eagles enter the 2025 basketball season looking to turn hard work into results.
Van Buren Boys Head Coach Dustin Sullivan said his young squad has impressed him with showing consistency and effort from the beginning of the summer.
“I’ve been really proud of what the guys have done so far,” Sullivan said. “They’ve been pretty consistent. When we’ve had conditioning, weightlifting sessions, open gyms, all the things that we’re allowed to have currently, we’ve had turnouts [and] hard work.”
This season, the Eagles will lean on youth and growth more than experience. With just two seniors, and only one returning from last season’s roster, Sullivan said he knows the learning curve will be steep. Sullivan said he remains encouraged by how his players have embraced the challenge.
“We’re quite a bit younger, inexperienced,” Sullivan said. “The strength side and shooting the basketball has been the two best [emphases] with probably weightlifting the biggest one, trying to get stronger.”
Sullivan said up to three freshmen are expected to be in the varsity rotation. Sullivan said the younger players have shown excitement and hunger in workouts, adapting quickly to the speed of high school basketball.
“It has yet to be seen how we will be able to tweak things,” Sullivan said. “We got some ideas, some ways we’ll probably need to change some things around just because the team has a different structure this year so we’ll have to emphasize some different things.”
Van Buren’s schedule will also bring some new challenges. Thanks to the girls team advancing to state last season, the boys will face several new opponents including some familiar faces from previous years. Among those faces are the Upperman Bees, who will face the Eagles in their season opener in November.