Golden Bears making some tracks on basketball court

When it comes to the winter sports season at Waynedale High School, wrestling is the headliner year in and year out. But the Golden Bears are making tracks on the basketball court as well, especially on the girls’ side of the ledger, where the young ladies mentored by head coach Rick Geiser are concocting a serious run at the Wayne County Athletic League title.

Through games of Jan. 16, the Golden Bears girls sported a 10-3 overall record with a 6-1 mark in the WCAL. The lone league loss was a 51-28 setback in Dalton against the front-running Bulldogs. But Waynedale got back on track in a big way, knocking off perennial powerhouse Chippewa 54-43 on the Chipps’ hardwood. When the Bears meet up with those two rivals again, they will do so in the cozy, loud Waynedale gymnasium.

Having won 17 games a year ago and with a collection of battle-tested juniors, Waynedale is crafting a very successful sisterhood without the benefit of even one senior on the roster.

“We’re such a close group, and we love playing basketball together,” 5-foot-6 junior forward Brooklyn Troyer said.

Troyer and 5-8 junior guard Kelsey Wolfe anchor the offensive output with respective 17.4 and 16.6 points-per-game averages. Troyer grabs just shy of 10 rebounds per game, and Wolfe’s specialty is on display behind the arc, where she’s nailed forty-four 3-pointers through the first 13 outings.

“We win together and lose together,” Troyer said. “We’re always doing things as a team and keeping each other in the loop. We know that we have to get every other member of the team involved as well to make for a team win. We’ve got to get the points up on the board and allow everyone else to flow from our energy.”

During the offseason last summer, the Bears were dedicated to the task of bettering themselves when it comes to straight-out basketball skills. They began checking off boxes when at practice, working on such things as ball-handling, dribbling and other crucial fundamentals.

By the time the summer drills were finished, Geiser said the girls as a group had checked off an astounding 3,500 boxes on their charts.

“We’re sitting in a good spot with our girls,” Geiser said after a recent win over the host Smithville Smithies. “The girls work really hard. They’ve had a lot of success on the basketball court growing up. They expect to win. Tonight was just a gritty effort because of how hard Smithville was playing and the effort they put forth.”

Wolfe said that despite the squad’s accomplishments to date, the season is still a work in progress.

“I think there’s always something we can learn, something we can get better at,” Wolfe said. “Everybody on the team is learning as we go, and we’re never going to be perfect in a game.”

Wolfe said the process of building team spirit and trust began all the way back in third grade. “We all get along. We love playing together. We’re close,” she said.

Geiser and his assistants won’t allow the girls to become complacent. “They are great girls coming from great families, and they have bought into playing team-first basketball, making the extra pass and competing defensively,” he said. “The girls have settled into their roles, but we’re trying to constantly evolve those as well. I think a lot of teams look at us as 3-point shooters first. We’re trying to develop that into driving and drive-and-kicks. We want to play unselfishly and let the ball move.”

When not coaching the girls, Geiser enjoys chalk talks with boys first-year head coach Aaron Shaffer. Geiser’s son, Zach, is a junior standout on the WHS boys team, and several of those boys played for the elder Geiser in their youth roundball endeavors.

The Waynedale boys got off to a red-hot start, winning a series of nip-and-tuck affairs. Of late, however, the Bears have been coming up shy in the nail-biters.

Through action of Jan. 18, the Bears were 7-5 overall and 5-4 in the conference.

The Bears are paced inside by 6-7 senior Mason Higgins, who’s been shooting at a 54 percent clip. He averages 9.5 rebounds per night. While none of the Bears are among the top-10 individual scorers in the area, the steady performers include Geiser, Mateo Camacho, Matt Weaver, Riley Hostetler and Zack Miller.

“We had a good start to the season and squeaked out some nice wins there at the beginning. We’ve competed in the last couple of games that we’ve lost. We’ve lost three games by a total of six points,” Shaffer said. “We’re right there. I just told the kids that it’s not coming down to very many things. Our margin of error is just small. We have to get more loose balls, get better on the boards and have less turnovers. We have to have better possessions with the ball in order for us to win games.”

Shaffer said he’s enjoying the climate for basketball at Waynedale and loves seeing the seats filled at home games.

“I want people to say that we’re tough kids, and I want people to just come and watch them play because of how hard they play. I guess our brand would be just that we have tough, hard-nosed kids,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer said he savors his relationship with Geiser. “I’ve actually known Rick for a couple of years,” he said. “We talk basketball a lot. He sees some things at our games that maybe we can work on that I don’t see. With this being my first year here, he’s helped me with a lot of things like the organization piece of it, just all the little behind-the-scenes stuff that you have to know as a head coach. The most fun thing about it is just seeing how much the kids care.”

Geiser agreed the climate overall at Waynedale is favorable. “I’m very close to a lot of the boys and coach Shaffer, and I have a lot of conversations about basketball and Xs and Os. We’re kind of a tight-knit community. We both have a lot of good players, and that’s because they’ve earned it,” he said.