My last four years at Centennial have been the best four years of my life. The people that I met and the friendships that I made here will last forever. I’ve been going to Centennial ever since I was in kindergarten so you could say that I have a lot of pride for my school. I couldn’t have asked for better teachers or coaches during my last four years.

The basketball program at Centennial might have not been the best during my last four years but being part of the program will be something that I will carry with me the rest of my life.

During my first three years at Centennial, Osa Esene was the varsity coach and the basketball teams were pretty successful under his watch. Then for my senior year Osa left  and John Poetsch became the varsity coach. Since my freshman and senior year were the most fun year for me those are the years that I will cover in this article.

Freshman year, basketball was very fun and the coach during that time was Andy Baldwin.  Baldwin stayed one year at Centennial then left to become an assistant at Southridge High School’s basketball team. During my freshman year the team pretty much went .500 which I consider a success because it was the first time that most of the players on the team had played together. Coach Baldwin was definitely one of the best coaches I ever had because his practices were hard but also fun. Under the watch of Baldwin my fundamentals and understanding of the game also got a lot better.

I enjoyed freshman year basketball a lot because there wasn’t a ton of pressure on the players to perform well, instead players can go out there and just play ball. I think that freshman year was a really good season for me and my teammates because we gained a lot of chemistry and got better playing together.

This season was by far the craziest season of all for me at Centennial. During the summer of 2017 Coach Esene made a decision to leave Centennial and take a job at Blue Mountain Community College in Pendleton.

Osa’s replacement was John Poetsch and coach Poetsch did a really good job coaching given the circumstances.Only three on this season’s varsity team had varsity level experience and only one of those three players (David Kunda) received solid minutes last season.

The inexperience was evident from the beginning as we went on a long losing streak to begin the season. We bounced back eventually and won two games in a row vs Aloha and Century. Conference play wasn’t much better as we were only able to pick up three wins against Reynolds twice and Gresham once.

Despite the tough season Poetsch was and will be the best coach that I ever had. In the one season that he coached me for I learned so much about the game and improved more than I did the last three seasons. Poetsch took a chance putting me on the team and I will be forever grateful. I’m not the type of person to make excuses but if Poetsch would have been coaching our group of seniors from freshman year, I know for sure that we would’ve been way better.  

Even though the last four years have been up and down for this senior class on the basketball court I know that we will all be forever grateful of opportunity to play for Centennial. I will be forever tied to this program and will always come out to watch and support My Eagles.

With Poetsch now leading the program, I know it will be no time before the Eagles basketball team is high flying like it once was before. I want to wish Coach Poetsch and all the current and future players good luck in their basketball endeavours.

And I almost forgot; Once an Eagle, Always an Eagle.