Juniors Maleah McKinley and Meghan O’Hara are managers for the varsity boys basketball team. They take videos of the games and keep the scorebook updated during the games as well. During practices, they run the scoreboards and time the players.

“They are pretty good, it’s super nice to have people writing down our stats for the games so I can see what I have to work on and get better on,” junior Nick Cherry explained.

McKinley and O’Hara started at the start of the year and plan on doing it next year as well. Going to every game and practice can be difficult to balance with school, but they still manage to work everything out.

The team has 5 wins and 9 losses on the season and the managers are a big part of that. They go to each game whether it is a home or an away game.

“Being a manager is a lot of work and it takes up time. But I love doing it and I like hanging out with the team during games,” McKinley said.

McKinley and O’Hara also keep the Stillwater community in touch with the team by running the Instagram account for the basketball team. They take pictures of the team and update the scores on Instagram.

“It helps the players to look at their shooting form when we take pictures of them. It also is cool for the parents to know the score of the game even if they are not at the game,” O’Hara explained.

One of the main reasons the managers sought this role is because they wanted to have a relationship with the players and coaches. They wanted to be able to celebrate with the team after a big win and be sad with them after a tough loss.

“The team is always nice to me and appreciate what I do. I get into the games like I’m actually in the game,” McKinley said.

Having managers help the coaches by getting water and doing anything they ask. Also, the coaches appreciate the time and work they put in to help the team do good on the season. Coaches come to rely on the managers during practices and during games by getting balls and other supplies.

“If we didn’t have them it would way harder to get better because we wouldn’t know what we were bad at,” Cherry said.