With 34 years of teaching and coaching, varsity basketball coach Celester Collier has high hopes for this year’s team.

“This year we’re better at taking care of the ball and turnovers,” said Collier. “We’re looking forward to some of our younger guys returning too.”

After many seniors graduated off the team last year, sophomores and juniors are taking over.

“11 seniors left last year,” Collier said “We want to see how the young guys can fill in and improve.”

Many players from the team are playing football, and won’t be back until football season ends.

“Once we get to the second half of the season, we’ll be solid,” Collier said “We have some spots that need to be filled from football.”

The team is still working on defense and rebounding before the first official games of the season.

“Our defense in general needs some work,” said assistant coach Brad Ingram. “We are pretty good at protecting the ball and handling though.”

Cody Lee, a junior on the varsity team, plays center and thinks there’s still more to work on.

“There’s a lot we need to work on,” Lee said. “Coach Collier says we need to work on discipline and defense especially, mostly just doing what we need to do.”

Practice is currently centered on defense and playing competitive scrimmages.

“Right now at practice we mostly scrimmage and work on defense,” Lee said.

The ongoing rivalry between Westlake and Bowie is also going to be a factor in this year’s season.

“Always, we are always in a rivalry with Westlake,” Collier said. “Austin ISD is generally a really competitive district.”

Akins is also going to be in the competition this year, since they are right next door.

“Akins is right in our backyard so of course they’re a rival,” Collier said “They’ve got a good ball club.”

Lake Travis and Westlake are going to be some of the bigger competitors from last year as well.

“You’re always in store for a good ball game when we play them, always,” Collier said.

Coach Collier, 1995 teacher of the year really impacts his students and inspires them to do better.

“I really like coach Collier,” Lee said. “He is awesome and really gets us pumped to do better and practice.”

Some students can think that coach Collier is kind of scary, but once you get to know the guy he’s super cool.

“Yeah when he’s mad he can be really scary,” said junior and former student in Collier’s health class Vaughn Osterhouse. “But he’s really cool most of the time and loves basketball.”

Bowie’s team is generally very competitive, so they know what to do and how to get it done.

“Yeah, it’s always super cool to watch the game,” said Junior Alan Varela. “They’re way better than lots of people I know and definitely know what to do.”

The team is coming back from last year’s with a 16-16 ratio for varsity according to MaxPreps.com.

Ranking 250^th out of 1,721 total campuses across Texas and 1,516 in the nation out of nearly 35,000 competing schools across America, according to MaxPreps.com.

The team’s next games will be tomorrow at McNeil High School starting at 5:30 and all boys team will be playing. The first boys tournament will be November 21-23 at Austin high.