The Wareham Warriors have only been a team for a year, but they’re going strong.

The team’s current record is 9-1, and coach Johnny Carrion insists that it’s for a very specific reason: “The night before the losing game, four of the players misbehaved.”

What’s a coach to do? In this case, bench the four misbehaving players for the game and make them watch their teammates on the court instead.

“I always tell them, the ‘l’ is for ‘lesson’, not 'loss',” Carrion explains. He hasn’t had to bench anyone since.

The Warriors, one of two sixth-grade boys’ traveling basketball teams in the Wareham School District, is leading their division at the Kingston Sports Center Winter League. The team is made up of nine sixth-graders and one fifth-grader from Wareham Middle School, ages 10 to 12.

The team began in the fall of 2016, when Carrion found the Kingston Sports Center’s basketball league, which was free for local teams to enter. He thought it would be an additional challenge for the boys to play against other teams in the area. The team practices two nights a week, generally at Minot Forest Elementary.

The practice has paid off. The Warriors recently cruised to victory in Kingston Sports Center’s Holiday Hoops Jamboree, a sixth-grade league tournament held shortly after Christmas.

“They’re a great group of kids,” Carrion says. “They show up every day, they try so hard.”

Then he stops the team and tells them to tie their shoelaces. “They can play basketball, but they can’t tie their shoelaces,” he says in mock indignation.

It quickly becomes clear that coach and players are as thick as thieves. The team hang on Carrion’s words and return the cheerful teasing wholeheartedly. As Carrion jokes about the shoelaces, player Juni Juarez runs up next to him and leaps, his hand skimming over Carrion’s head. Carrion rolls his eyes good-naturedly and Juni returns to the line-up to run suicides.

Jennifer DeMello, the mother of player Jared DeMello, appreciates Carrion’s approach. “This is a great physical outlet for the kids,” she explained. “Coach Carrion is concerned with more than basketball; he wants to know how his players are. If anyone is having any trouble at school or at home, he doesn’t single anyone out, but he talks to the whole team about that issue.”

She cites a recent pep talk Carrion gave where he reminded the students that if they wanted to play basketball, they needed to have their grades up to par first. “It’s a great way to help them be well-rounded.”