A look into the Ohio River Shootout in Vienna Illinois

VIENNA, IL. (KBSI) – The Ohio River Shootout is a chance for nine high schools across both Illinois and Kentucky to spend time out of their summer to help kids improve their basketball skills and build team chemistry on the basketball court.

The 9 different teams competing in the Ohio River Shootout included Vienna, Carterville, Eldorado, Pope County, Herrin, Marion in Illinois, then CCA Paducah, Livingston County, and Heath all from Kentucky. The teams varsity and junior varsity teams competed June 19, and 20 at the Vienna high school.

School leaders say that they look for different opportunities to allow their players a chance to play competitive games together as a team in preparation for their upcoming basketball seasons.

Jacob Waters is a senior Center for the Vienna High School Basketball team and he told Fox 23 about his expectations for this upcoming season After losing to Massac County in the regional championship last year.

“How to get pretty far in the postseason maybe win the regional this year so I think we have a pretty good chance.” Then Waters told Fox23 about what he’s looking for in his personal growth this off-season saying ” I hope you like you said just grow as a team get better every day and hopefully we are records at 29 wins hopefully break that this year.”

Waters the told us about what it means to have the Ohio River Shootout to aid in the teams devolvement “It helps a lot with Our development as a team and as individual players we get to play more with each other and our chemistry is already pretty good as a team.”

Carter Whitehead is a shooting guard for Vienna and he says that the Ohio River Shootout is a perfect opportunity for the players to get the chance to play together as a full combined team for the first time saying “For us to it means to just play better because we never played together through high school because we are all different schools and grade.” Whitehead then said “so now we’re trying to learn chemistry and all that it means to get better too because you know you have to put in the work too during the summer time to get better so yeah that’s what it means to me. ”

Whitehead went on to say that he looks forward to the opportunity to help push his team to their goals in sectionals this year.

“I look forward to just doing the best we can try to at least make it to sectionals because we try to improve every year you know so we’ve got work to do.”

Waters wrapped up by saying that its awesome to have opportunities like the Ohio River Shootout to improve their skills and work together as a team.

“Oh yeah, that’s awesome that we have opportunities like this tournaments to get better as a team.”