SYRACUSE – Recent seasons haven’t been kind to the Wawasee High School boys basketball team. This year’s squad will begin the season carrying the burden of a 21-game Northern Lakes Conference losing streak, with losing seasons and no sectional wins each of the last three years. The Warriors and second year head coach Steve Wiktorowski are looking to change all that. “One of the things about last year is we had a rough start,” said Wiktorowski. “We had several one-point losses, and we had a hard time finding a win. So one of the first things we want to do is establish that first W. Then we have that NLC streak we’d like to get taken care of. “I think the seniors would like to go out with a winning season, and of course there’s the sectional. So without having talked about goals specifically, those are all things I’m sure our players would like to accomplish.” The Warriors have a lot of experience returning, and have had a chance to work together as a team this offseason. “We have 10 letter winners. and seven of those kids are seniors. Clearly we’re farther ahead than we were at this point last year,” Wiktorowski said. “To put in a brand new system with no summer work last year was difficult. We’re farther ahead in our understanding, and I think the kids have matured a lot, both physically but especially mentally. “They understand a lot more what it takes to compete in the NLC. Hopefully we can take advantage of that and have a season where we can pick up some more wins. “Last year we had two practices, and this year we had a full month of practice in the summer, and we played 14-15 games. I thought it really helped us a lot, and the kids came out of it feeling pretty good about themselves.” Wawasee’s defensive effort was solid last season, but the team had issues scoring. “We hope to pick up where we left off defensively, maybe even increase things a little bit, increase our pressure and create more turnovers than we did last year,” said Wiktorowski. “Offensively, we’re clearly going to be a better team before the season is out. We’ll be a much more consistent team. We’ll be better scoring inside, and we’ll look to push the ball. I think we’re really strong on the perimeter with Alex Clark and Gage Reinhard and Aaron Voirol. There’s a pretty good chance those three will start on the outside and be our main scorers. “Sam Clark has really improved as a point guard and he’ll really cut down on his turnovers. I think he’s the key to our defensive intensity. “Jayce Boatwright, Parker Hatfield and Elijah Solina will all give Stori (Bright) some help on the inside. Last year Stori had to carry the load a lot, so we’re hoping those three guys will at least give us some depth on the inside.” The Warrior lineup may be somewhat unconventional at times as Wiktorowski mixes and matches to take full advantage of the skills of the squad. “We’re not a very big team, and we’ll probably start four perimeter players the majority of the time. But we can post up a lot of different people,” he said. “We’re going to look for the mismatches when we can, try and get out and get some early post-up in fast breaks and things like that. We also have some good penetrators, and that’s a way to score inside.” With the offseason work, and the preparation the team has taken on, Wawasee appears poised to change the trend of the last three seasons. “We had a lot of kids in fall sports, and those that weren’t really worked hard this fall,” Wiktorowski said. “We have some kids who are very dedicated; they really want to work to get our record turned around.” Wawasee opens its season at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday when Fairfield comes to Syracuse.
