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Pictured is OVHS senior Jared Bunfill.

•August 2, 2017•

Austin Hill and Jared Bunfill, Okaw Valley seniors, have had outstanding summers playing for the Sky Ice Elite.

The Sky Ice Elite 17U basketball team experienced one of the more successful seasons in the program’s short history. The team is comprised of players from Okaw Valley, Decatur, Champaign, Bloomington, Mt. Zion and Springfield.  The program, spearheaded by Eisenhower boys’ basketball coach Rodney Walker and MacArthur girls’ basketball coach Michael Williams, has provided an AAU experience for kids in grades 3-11.

This year’s 11th grade team was coached by Roy Gilmore who completed his third year with Sky Ice.

The team had two first place finishes in the 7-State Border War in Indianapolis and the Sky Ice Elite Belguim Showcase and a second place finish in the Shaun Livingston Classic in Peoria to open the season. In between, they have won at least two games in each of the tournaments played – finishing the year with 24 wins. Other tournament locations included Bolingbrook, Hammond, Ind., Macomb  and Pleasant Prairie, Wis.  They were usually placed in the toughest draw in each tournament so the boys played extremely well even if the number of wins didn’t reflect that.       Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.