Fountain Hills High School boys basketball head coach Jeff Bonner has high goals for his team this season, but said he knows that if his players can get into the right mindset, the sky is the limit.

The Falcons’ first game of the 2019-2020 season is on Tuesday, Nov. 26, against Scottsdale Christian Academy. The game will be at FHHS and starts at 7 p.m.

Right now, Bonner’s focus is on getting his team into “basketball shape” after a year away from the game.

“We’ve still got to get into a little better shape and that is the struggle of summer,” Bonner said. “I think the guys are starting to see now how basketball conditioning is different from other sports. So right now I am trying to get the guys to work through some of the soreness and fatigue.”

Bonner said he expects his players to give full attention when they are at practice, even when they are taking a breather. That constant focus is part of the championship mindset he wants the team to be in.

“We want to teach everyone in the program a championship mindset,” Bonner explained. “We repeat it out loud to ourselves but we also have to make sure that our actions show that, and that is my next personal big goal, to try to get the guys to understand how champions act.”

Bonner wants to get the team acting like champions because he believes that a state championship is something that they are capable of.

“My goal for the season, I know it might sound super cliché, but I want to win a state championship,” Bonner said. “I really think that we have a great opportunity this year to win a state championship compared to last year. This year, we have a lot more players committed to basketball and committed to the way I want things to run; so that will produce a product way better than we were last year, and we weren’t that bad last year.”

It will be up to the team, Bonner said, and the effort he receives from them.