The boys varsity basketball team had its fourth game this season against Westfield at AHS on Dec. 13. They were not able to defeat the Westfield Bulldogs due to an early shortfall that they could not bounce back from. They ended up losing to Westfield 58-65, dropping to 0-4 for the season.

The game began with freshman Austin Hall, junior Sanar Shamdeen, freshman Ahmed Elnour, senior Amiel Terry and junior Khalid Claudius as the five starting players. They were tied at the beginning, but a few minutes into the first quarter Westfield took the lead, and kept it throughout the game.

At the half, the Atoms trailed behind the Westfield Bulldogs with a score of 22-29. Westfield was in the lead for the entire second half of the game.

Sanar Shamdeen scored the most points for the Atoms, leading them closer to the Bulldogs. Even the multiple shots from Shamdeen could not get the Atoms to beat the Bulldogs.

“I think that we definitely played better tonight than the previous three games with the fewest amount of turnovers we’ve had this far,” freshman Austin Hall said.

Even though the team is on a losing streak, players are still optimistic about the rest of the season. They feel that they will continue to improve on their skills. As the season continues, the team members hope to improve on their performance on the court, and to win a lot more games.

“I think we’re turning it around right before the start of district games,” Hall said.

Many of the players thought that this was going to be the first win of the season. This evidently was not the case, yet players are still hopeful for the rest of the season.

“We came out thinking that we’d get our first win but unfortunately that didn’t happen,” sophomore Michael Tran said.

The team has many more games left in the season, and with a positive mindset from each of the players, the team wishes to excel and win most of those games.

“We’ve just got to keep our heads up and hopefully we can turn things around this season,” Tran said.