NORTH MANCHESTER -ÊThe year was 1988 and the place Market Square Arena, where a 17-year-old girl by the name of Jody Yochum doggedly searched for a way to get on the floor.

Her dreams of playing on the MSA floor had ended when Warsaw's girls basketball team beat her Tippecanoe Valley team in the sectional, long before the state finals. To this day, she tells you, "We choked."

Since she was a senior, and since her last chance to play in MSA had disappeared, Yochum needed to find a new excuse to get on the floor. She and teammate Lori Gray brainstormed.

"We asked if we could sweep the floor just to step on the floor," she says. "We were willing to pay money, and - don't take this the wrong way - do whatever it took to get down on the floor. We almost got down there."

Almost.

Problem with almost is, it hurts so much. That familiar hurt from "almost" came back this March, 10 years later.

Now Jody Yochum is Jody Shewman, the 27-year-old head coach of the Manchester Squires girls basketball team. She wears warmups - black and white top, black pants - and sits in a chair in the front row of Manchester's gym, talking about "almost."

Two weeks ago her 21-3 Squires, making their first semistate appearance, were eight minutes away from playing in the 1998 state finals at Market Square Arena. All the Squires had to do was nurse a 40-28 fourth-quarter lead. All they had to do was hang on for eight minutes.

They couldn't do it. Bluffton outscored them 27-9 in those last eight minutes to win the Logansport Semistate championship 55-49.

That weekend Shewman wrote a letter to each one of her 10 players and delivered them to their Monday morning classes.

"The (letters) told them how hard Monday would be," Shewman says. "People would say we did our best job, and I told the girls not to let everything get the best of them. A lot of the girls told me thank you."

Shewman knew she had to be strong for her girls early in the week, and she stayed strong through Wednesday. But shouldering everyone's burdens began weighing her down.

"It hit me hardest on Thursday," she says. "That hurt, it'll never go away."

She and her players faced the hurt head on. Shewman, assistant coach Jennifer Howard and all 10 players attended the state finals at MSA last weekend.

Shewman has been head coach at Manchester for two years. Both years, every varsity player has made the optional trip with Shewman to Indianapolis.

"We went down Friday to the luncheon - they have a team luncheon every year," she says. "It was hard sitting in the wrong spot.

"I've heard coaches say they don't want to mess with taking the girls to the state finals. I feel sorry for coaches like that. That's something they'll never forget. We had girls bonding just staying overnight in the same room. I still remember things I did when I went down in high school."

And remembers things people tell her. Asked what she feels her strengths are, Shewman offers listening to what other people say. This includes her players. It was nothing for Shewman to ask her players during halftime or timeouts what they thought needed to be done.

"I had knowledgeable players," she says, "I asked them what to do in situations more than once. I'm not set in my ways."

This does not mean she's a Basketball Bennie who lets her players show up late to practice. She views herself as a disciplinarian.

Two years ago Shewman attended the Indiana Coaches Clinic. The guest speaker was University of Tennessee women's basketball coach Pat Summitt, the Pat Summitt who owns five national championships and an .814 winning percentage, fifth-best all-time for men's and women's teams.

In a recent Sports Illustrated story, senior writer Gary Smith compared Summitt's blue eyes to drill bits. Shewman knows about the drill bits. No matter where you sat, Shewman says, it felt like those blue drill bits were boring holes into only you.

"So intense and such a disciplinarian," Shewman says of Summitt. "Her eyes are blue, but they have that fire in them. I'm not by any means comparing myself to her, but I gathered bits and pieces about disciplining from her."

Shewman's players have four things written on their practice shorts: Play hard. Play smart. Play together. Have confidence.

Shewman took those from Summitt's speech. Listening to and watching Summitt left Shewman in awe. If Pat Summitt had those four lines as a team motto, Shewman figured, why not us?

"She left before I could have talked with her one on one," she says. "That was probably good, because I would have been too nervous anyway."

Play hard. Play smart. Play together. Have confidence.

Shewman's players did those things this year. They captured Manchester's first sectional title since 1984 and won the first regional title in school history.

Shewman's record at Manchester is 35-10. The two years before she arrived, the Squires were 7-32. The words "girls basketball" and "future" in the same sentence now cause excitement in North Manchester.

Shewman is asked what this team, this season taught her. The question makes her pause. She ponders the question, runs a hand through her hair, rests her chin in her hand. Then she answers.

"How important teaching and coaching is to me," she says. "We can't take things for granted. I try to teach the kids to take one day at a time. A couple of years ago, I tried to do too many things at once and jumped too far ahead.

"You can't change the past, but you can always prepare for the future. That's what we're trying to teach here." [[In-content Ad]]