MT. VERNON — It’s been a big week for the Mt. Vernon Rams boys basketball team.

After spending the last few weeks working on individual skills outside at the City Park, the Rams had a chance to practice as a team in Changnon Gym Monday after Region 5 met metrics over the weekend to allow practices for High Risk sports.

Then just a couple of hours before practice Friday, the news broke that the Illinois Department of Public Health had approved games for High Risk sports for schools in regions that had reached Phase 4 in the Restore Illinois recovery plan.

“I was excited. I saw it today when I was at lunch,” said Rams’ senior Carson Prost. “I was just showing everybody we’re getting to play. It’s something we’ve been waiting three months for to happen.”

“It was awesome. It felt like Christmas,” added fellow Rams’ senior Dylan Harkins. “It was really nice to hear that. We’ve been working so hard, and we finally got what we wanted, so it worked out.”

One of the stipulations of being able to have a season is practicing and playing in masks. The players admit that took some getting accustomed to, but they said they’ll do whatever it takes to get to play.

“It actually makes us more conditioned believe it or not, because it’s hard to breathe in these things” Harkins said. “We’re just doing whatever we can. As long as we’re playing basketball, we don’t care.”

Holloway has seen plenty of bounce from his guys after getting to start full practices in the gym earlier this week. The news that games are on the horizon was long-awaited icing on the cake.

“We’ve had a good week of practice,” Holloway said. “To cap that off today with the news that our area is going to be allowed to play games is exciting.”

“We have a lot more energy,” Harkins said. “We just have something to look forward to now.”

While the season dates haven’t been released yet, the games are coming. For a team with some high expectations, that means putting the work in now to get better.

“The one on one skill work’s been good,” said Holloway. “We’ve been able to do a lot of things with that, but as far as getting together as a team and working on some of our habits I felt we had in October with our close outs, block outs, taking care of the ball, all the little things. We’ve got to get our habits back and get ready to play. I know the guys will work hard and get back to where they were.”

Teams are required to have 12 practices before being able to play a game. The IHSA is scheduled to release scheduling dates Wednesday.