What’s Up Everybody, its Jimmy Hayes of Chicago Mount Carmel dropping my 3rd journal for Illinoishsbasketball Things are going real well since I dropped my last journal. I closed off a great summer playing with RBS, St. Louis Falcons and Illinois Playmakers. My favorite tournament of the year was playing with the Illinois Playmakers at the Fall P.E.P. Classic. The team had 6-11 Mike Dunnigan (Oregon), 6-11 Luke Fabrizius (Dayton), 6-10 John Shurna (Northwestern), 6-6 Carl Richard (Indiana State), Kevin Stineman (SIU-E), Dylan Riche r(Washington U), and Brian DiSimone, Jason Music and myself: 3 of the top players left on the board. We won the tournament and people said we were the best team in the Country.
I was in the Full Package and Illinoishsbasketball.com Fall Exposure League. I played on the Lakers which featured 3 of my closest friends, Carl Richard, Allen Clark, and Johny McGinty. I had a great time, we were one of the best teams in the league and we made it to the final 4. I received All League Honors. Workouts began for school and we were ready for a great year. We came in ranked as Pre-Season #15 in Illinois and we looked to hold it down. We had a tough task ahead of us though. We have one of the most difficult schedules in all of Illinois. We beat Lane Tech easily and then lost 3 straight close games to Evanston, OPRF, and Zion Benton. These were tough loses and we were questioning ourselves. We then went on a 2 game winning streak beating Taft, and Guerin Prep. We Lost to Fenwick, in another game we blew, and then had 2 wins at St. Laurence and vs. St. Charles. We are back in the grove at 5-4. We play at Providence Friday and then we head to the Pekin Holiday Tournament next week for a couple of days, in which we play Geneseo first round, led by Tyler Storm. If we win and Pekin wins we will play them. That would mean a match-up between last year’s Illinois 1st place 3 Point Winner Jamie King and last years 4th place Winner in me, face off. I have been pretty good my first couple of games. I am becoming a better defender day in and day out. Recruiting is going better than ever. A lot of D2's and D3's are showing hard interest along with D1's. I have considered possibly going Prep or Juco next year, but I haven’t decided for sure. Last week was very tough for me as it was 1 year since my dad passed away after a struggle with cancer. But I am going to try and make it for my dad.
I wanna Thank Dan and IllinoisHSBasketball for giving me this opportunity. Keep up the Good Work. I wanna give a shoutout to my family and close friends who keep me going. A Shoutout to Katie, who is absolutely amazing and supports me and is always there for me! Also, my cousin Thomas who is always there for me. Thanks for everything everyone and God Bless~!
Jimmy "Trey" Hayes
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