On his seventh year of playing basketball, sophomore Anthony Freyre continues to work hard to prove himself and make it onto the Birmingham Community Charter High School Varsity basketball team.

“As a player I’m trying to get better so I can play for varsity by next year,” point guard Freyre said. “I have to practice shooting and dribbling.”

The BCCHS’ junior varsity (JV) boys and freshmen or frosh basketball players have been using a new system, Golden State System as the boys like to call it, in which their point guards are the offensive thread as well as crucial shooters.

“I play on jv and frosh but right now I am on frosh and we lost most of our games except two,” Freyre said

Evidently, the boys still have some work to do. They have lost all of their games except for two. Their upcoming game against school rival, Taft Charter High School will be on Feb. 27.

“I found out about the game (against Taft) just yesterday,” Freyre said. “I know it’s a win, it’s a mandatory win.”

Practice is the main basis for success in every sport, and BCCHS’ boys basketball team makes no exception. The boys practice from Monday to Friday for two to three hours, and sometimes on the weekends.

Typical practice consists of starting off doing left and right layups, practicing their plays followed by doing a shoot around. At the end of practice the boys get in the free-throw line and make six free throws and then go home.

“Practice is really tiring, we get punished for every little mistake by running,” Freyre said. “It can get boring but somehow it’s always fun how much we work out I love practice.”