Story by Theo Jansen.

Some people visit Arizona for its natural beauty and warm weather. The Westside girls basketball team will be traveling there to participate in the Nike Tournament of Champions, an elite basketball competition. This is one of the most prestigious tournaments of its kind.

“You have to get accepted,” said Steven Clark, the Westside girls varsity coach. “They look at your record in your state, your ranking in your state and the number of returning players.”

The tournament has a large number of teams, 96, but there are even more applications, which makes it hard to get in. Westside has never been to a tournament such as this, but other teams from Nebraska have.

“Nebraska teams have gone the past couple years,” Clark said. “Lincoln Christian has gone. Fremont has gone. Northwest is going back for the second time this year.”

The outlook for the tournament is uncertain, as the schedules have not come out yet, but there are many nationally-ranked teams in the tournament’s upper echelons. Clark said he hopes that no matter the outcome, this trip brings the girls closer together.

“They’re really excited to go spend a week together, hang out in the hotel, play competitive games,” Clark said. “They’re really looking forward to getting to know each other even better.”

Ella Wedergren, a sophomore guard, said the team has been preparing a lot for this event.

“We’ve had a lot of team meetings about our goals,” Wedergren said. “We’ve been really putting forth the effort to know all of our plays and our defenses, and how we can play in transition.”

The team has had to do a lot of fundraising to make this trip possible.

“We had multiple fundraisers,” Clark said. “We tried to have a few big dollar fundraisers instead of selling multiple things and asking people to buy things over and over again. “We had five major fundraisers and we tried to get donations from multiple people, not the same people every time.”

Aside from the tournament, the team has set some lofty goals for this season after a disappointing end to last season in the district tournament.

“Most other teams; their goals are to win state, win districts, get a home district, and try and win the Metro tournament,” Clark said. “We want to try and win the Arizona tournament. Those are always our team goals.”

Wedergren said she has set some personal goals as well.

“I am looking to score more than I did last year, but also just help the team to run the court, get everybody the ball so it is not just a one or two person game,” Wedergren said.

Sophomore guard Abby Hellman said she has also set some goals for the season.

“We each come up with one word every year and we focus on doing that,” Hellman said. “Last year my one word was confidence and this year my one word is tenacity.”

Both Clark and Wedergren hope the Nike Tournament of Champions will help set the team up for success later in the season. Playing against highly ranked opponents is a great way for the team to prepare to play the best Nebraska has to offer in the state tournament. If Westside does well, they could find themselves in the national rankings.