Screaming erupts from the crowd, as the crowd goes wild. You look around the arena to see the crowd filled with smiles and shocked faces.

The Highlands boys basketball team captured their first state championship ever –  72-60.

Even five months later, these memories are still fresh in Senior Zach Barth’s mind.

“We are coming the same this year but twice as hard. It felt great. We have all been looking forward to that moment for quite a while, [and] it felt great to finally experience a state championship and show out.”

This win has been a long time coming for the Bluebirds and all the hard work finally paid off.

Barth has been playing basketball since the first grade and his dad Trevor Barth formed a team called GameTime. The first three members on the team were Barth, Luke Muller (Highlands class of ‘21 and Sam Vinson (Highlands class of ’21).

According to Trevor Barth, his son did not let anything get in his way.

“With still a lot of work to do, he has improved most on his mental part of the game, not letting emotions influence his game.

Barth began to focus on becoming a hard worker.

“Zach started taking basketball more seriously when he realized his talent wasn’t meeting his work ethic. He started getting less playing time and realized he needed to work harder.”

Years later Barth had put in the effort and it paid off, and he is now a leader on the team. 

Barth has an important motto as he has big plans to push the team more. 

“Do the same thing but twice as hard, twice the focus, and twice the energy.”

Along with Barth, Highlands High School Basketball Coach Kevin Listerman also has big plans for the team. 

“We have to get bigger physically, we have to become better shooters and we have to grow as a group and that’s going to take some time. We have some great leadership and are looking for them to step up and take us where we want to go.”

The team and Listerman have high expectations for this season.

“They want to prove that last year wasn’t an accident and that we lost some very good players, but we still return a very good group.”

Even though they lost some very good players, this year’s team and Barth want to tell everyone that they are back and better than ever. 

“We are going to be a top team this year as well, and we have to stay focused and keep putting in the work to get better so we can try to bring it home again.”