On Saturday, Jan. 4, the Kaneland High School varsity boys basketball team played Belvidere North at Fiserv Stadium in Milwaukee, the home of the NBA’s Bucks.
The team got to play on the Bucks court for the second consecutive year. Kaneland defeated Belvidere North 61-44. They also were able to go see the Bucks play the Portland Trail Blazers that evening and got to spend time together as a whole team.
Sophomore Jeffery Hassan is a starter this year. He has been enjoying being on the team with his brother, senior Freddy Hassan. This is the second time he has played on the Bucks court.
“My favorite part was the spacing,” Jeffery Hassan said. “It felt easier to run the floor and get buckets because it didn’t feel as cramped. Another thing that was cool was playing on the Bucks court too, obviously.”
Freddy Hassan has been on the varsity team for the past three years and is a starter for the second year. This is also his second time playing on the Milwaukee Bucks court.
“The best part of being at the Bucks stadium was probably playing there with my brother and my best friends,” Freddy Hassan said.
Junior Marshawn Cocroft is the starting point guard. He played at the Bucks stadium for the first time because he had transferred into the Kaneland district this year.
“My favorite part of playing at the Bucks stadium was being able to shoot deep NBA threes,” Cocroft said. “I didn’t make them all, but I made a few and got to experience how [Stephen] Curry and LeBron [James] shoot threes.”
With another win in the bag, the team was ready to go and see the Bucks play on the court they just had played on. They had to wait for a couple of hours until they got to see them, so they had the opportunity to get in some team bonding as they waited.
Freddy Hassan has always liked basketball. He enjoyed going to see games with friends and family.
“I enjoyed watching Giannis [Antetokounmpo] and Dame [Lillard], two Hall of Famers,” Freddy Hassan said. “And my cousin’s on the team too, so that was cool.”
The Bucks game ended with the Portland Trail Blazers defeating the Bucks 105-102. It was a very close game and at the very end, the Bucks had a few opportunities to win, but it was a good game to watch.
“Just enjoying watching the game with the team and observing how Giannis and other players play was fun,” Jeffery Hassan said.
This is becoming an annual tradition for Kaneland to choose another team to play at the stadium and have a fun overnight trip. They have been having fun with this new tradition and will hopefully keep it up for the years to come.
![When I chose to take a tour of the Old Joliet Prison in Joliet, IL, I had no idea what I was walking into. I’ve heard of multiple paranormal events happening here, but I was more interested in how a prisoner lived. I wanted to feel their hopelessness and wanted to understand what it must have been like to sit in an empty cell and yearn for sunlight.
The Old Joliet Prison is a daunting structure that appears, seemingly, out of nowhere. When driving to the prison, it isn’t until someone is a few feet away that they see the large walls and barbed wire. Just driving past it, they can feel a change in the atmosphere.
When a prisoner is being driven there, they don’t know how close they are. They are driving through a suburban neighborhood before they reach a small unassuming bridge. Yet, as soon as they go under the bridge and back into the sunlight, they finally see the prison and know that as soon as they go in, they will never come out.
“In 1878, the Prison was filled well over capacity with nearly 2,000 inmates,” according to jolietprison.org, a website that tells the history of the prison and allows for you to sign up for tours. “[There were] reports of unsanitary and dangerous conditions emerged.”
Throughout the state, people knew the allegations that staff was abusing the prisoners as well as killing them. Once a prisoner was told that they were going to Old Joliet Prison, they knew that it was a death sentence](https://kanelandkrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/prison1.jpg)
