SOUTH WHITLEY – Coach Roger Fleetwood arrived at Whitko last year and found the cupboard pretty bare. He started the school year with just six players, and worked the hallways to recruit enough guys to fill out a varsity and JV roster. There are those who believe the six wins the Wildcats earned last winter were about all they were capable of. So the Wildcats returning for this season went to work over the summer to change all that. “We’re really proud of what we’ve done in the offseason. I think people will be able to see with this team how much time they’ve spent getting better from March to November. And that’s always the key; it’s the time individuals get better. They lift weights, they work on their skills, they work on their game, and they play enough to get a better understanding of how to play basketball,” Fleetwood said. “They did all those things, and it wasn’t just one, two or three guys. Ninety-eight percent of the guys coming back put in the time to get better. And it had to happen for us to get better, quicker. What I’m excited about is ‘will that show like I think that it’ll show?’ And I think it will. “We have four starters back who started most of the games last year. You add that kind of experience with good guards, and I think we have very good guards, you’ve got a chance to be pretty good.” Last year Whitko relied heavily on Nate Walpole, who averaged better than 20 points a game. The junior led the way this summer for the Wildcats. “Nate’s had an unbelievable offseason,” Fleetwood said. “He was a pretty good sophomore, but he has a chance to be a really good junior. His game has risen greatly because of the amount of effort he’s put into himself in the offseason. “It’s always nice when your best player works as hard as anybody you have, because he sets an example that everybody else wants to match. They don’t want to give less when they see that the guy who’s the leading scorer and best player is working as hard or harder than anybody else. So that’s a great place to start. He’s a good leader who works hard.” Walpole wasn’t the only Wildcat committed to improvement. Other returnees include sophomore River West, the only other Wildcat to average double-digit scoring last season, along with seniors Tanner Gaff and Hunter Sroufe, and junior Alex Bechtold. Whitko began the school year with 22 players on the varsity and junior varsity rosters. The workouts haven’t been merely a physical improvement experience, according to Fleetwood. “We’re a better all-around basketball team for two reasons. One, because Nate now has trust in his teammates, because they’re all improved so much,” he said. “When we went to different camps this summer and played as a team, you could see the trust he has in them by the way he played. He didn’t try to do too much. He, like all good players, and they want to win; they’re competitors who will try to do as much as they can, and sometimes that’s counter-productive. Now he has great trust in his teammates. “And the second thing is because they’ve all become much better basketball players than they were a year ago. They’ve been right there beside him through those eight months. He wasn’t in the gym by himself. If we have the success I think we can have, it’ll be because of the amount of mutual trust and respect our team has for each other. With the work comes higher expectations, including a much better record than the 2015-16 season. Fleetwood said last year’s team did the best they could under the circumstances, but the belief level should rise this year along with the number in the win column. “I think we can be competitive in almost every game we play this year. There won’t be any picking and choosing this year,” said Fleetwood. “Last season I looked at the schedule and picked out seven teams I thought we had a chance to beat and I scouted the heck out of those teams. We won six of those seven I thought we could. I was smart enough to know that all we were trying to do in those other games was compete as hard as we could. “This year I don’t feel that way. I feel like the best two teams we play is the first game (vs. Columbia City) and the last team we play, NorthWood. Everyone else in the middle we’re not going to be afraid or run and hide.” While Fleetwood and everyone else remembers the 73-16 loss to Columbia City to open last season, the coach said he doesn’t expect a repeat of that game or last season’s 0-9 start. “I would be totally shocked if that happened. I think it’ll be a decent game. But there’s some games after that, and it’d be nice to win a few of those, and get in the habit of winning.”
