After losing their three opening games last week versus Jesuit, Mountainside and West Salem, the Lake Oswego boys basketball team looks to refocus under new head coach Mark Swenson. Swenson replaced longtime coach Marshall Cho this offseason. Cho resigned after eight seasons with the Lakers at the end of last season, saying on his Instagram that he was “ready to take on a new challenge and areas of growth, helping to grow the game here in Oregon and abroad.” 

Swenson has served as an assistant coach at Linfield University for three years and Lewis and Clark College for almost 30 years. Swenson told the Lake Oswego Review that his team will be “up-tempo, and we’ll shoot the three, and try to have as much fun for the kids as we can.” The new coach says that he has an advantage over other coaches around the Oregon basketball scene since he has “been living with the shot clock for 33 years, so I think that we can use that and a lot of things we do to shorten the game for opponents.” Swenson brought another former Linfield coach, Shanan Rosenberg along with him to be his assistant.

The team is close-knit, senior Luke Hawkins says their biggest strength is “our experience playing together and the chemistry we have as a team. Being a part of Laker basketball is being part of something bigger than yourself and looking out for friends and teammates and being able to have an opportunity to achieve something great.” 

The team is “undersized” according to senior Aengus Sutherland but they make up for it with “grit.” The Lakers have a tough season ahead of them in a competitive Three Rivers League, Hawkins says “a big goal would be winning Three Rivers.”

 Lake Oswego is set to take on the 9th ranked team in the nation, Columbus (FL) High School, in their opening matchup in the Les Schwab Invitational later this month. The Lakers won’t be satisfied with anything less than “making the playoffs” says senior Issac Mccoy.