It’s no secret in Kosciusko County that the Grace mens’ basketball team has had plenty of success over the course of the program’s history. The latest iteration of the Lancers recently won the Crossroads League Tournament for the fourth straight time and will head into the NAIA national tournament as a top-2 seed, including last year’s overall No. 1 seed, for the third year in a row.
Perhaps just as impressive is the fact that Grace has been able to have this success while recruiting a large portion of its athletes locally in Northern Indiana. A majority of the roster hails from north of Indianapolis, including a handful of players from Kosciusko and the surrounding counties.
This fact is not lost on the players.
“It’s really cool to see Indiana represented so well in our league and to see how many talented guys across the state there are,” senior Carter Stoltzfus, formerly of Northridge, said. “To have a bunch of Northern Indiana guys here and to be able to play together, it’s really awesome to see how much basketball has grown, especially up here.”
“Some of these guys that we’re playing against and playing with, we’ve seen them since the third grade,” sophomore Ian Raasch, NorthWood graduate, added. “Growing up with them and still playing together now, it makes it a lot more special.”
Along with Raasch and Stoltzfus, the Lancers also boast two former Times-Union Players of the Year in senior Brett Sickafoose (Whitko) and Seth Martin (Lakeland Christian). They’ll add a third next year in Gavin Betten (Manchester). When you pair the fact that a lot of these players' families and fans live just a short car ride away with the success that the team has had in recent years, you get the Manahan Orthopaedic Capital Center packed to the gills. That was the case last Monday night when the Lancers defeated Huntington for their fourth straight conference tournament title.
An environment like that is exactly what players sign up for when they head to college to play ball at the next level, and Grace has provided that environment for practically the entire career of seniors like Sickafoose.
“I was at church on Sunday and someone I didn’t even know came up to me and told me that he had watched me in high school and now at Grace,” he said. “There’s just so many people in our community that have watched us for our entire careers and continue to do so, and that adds to our atmosphere. Then they keep coming back because you can’t really get that type of environment at most high schools or even other NAIA schools.”
Stoltzfus added that this support has grown over the course of his career at Grace, and that’s something he’s loved to see.
“I took my recruiting visit during COVID, so obviously there weren’t a whole lot of people here. By the end of my freshman year, you could tell that the student section was starting to grow and my sophomore and junior year it just kind of exploded,” the former Raider added. “I think some of that has to do with the style of play that we have, sharing the ball really well. It’s really cool to see how in just four years how much the community has bought into us.”
The Lancers will have a chance to play up to two more games in front of their home crowd this weekend, as Grace plays host to the first two rounds of the NAIA Tournament. The No. 2 Lancers will take on No. 15 Carolina at 5 p.m. on Friday before No. 7 Pikeville and No. 10 St. Francis square off at 7 p.m. The two winners will fight for the right to advance to the Sweet 16 Saturday at 5 p.m. All remaining games will be held in Kansas City.
“It’s a nice little reward for all of the people who have supported us from the jump,” Martin said. “They get to come here and watch the benefits of the hard work and the time that they’ve put in with us in the sport that we love so much.”
Grace will hope to find some more success in the tournament, as last year saw the team make it to the Final Four, the furthest the Lancers have ever gone at the Division I level. It served as a leap above the prior year, in which the team made it to the Elite Eight. With a large chunk of those teams now senior leaders, the men are ready to go deep once more.
“We like where we stand. We’re hoping to get that Red Banner,” Raasch said.
“I think part of the reason why we’ve had success in the past is because we don’t really care who we play. We have Carolina first and we’ll worry about the rest later,” Stoltzfus said. “Once you start looking ahead, that’s when all of a sudden, it’s over. One game at a time, just keep moving on.”