Every time the girls basketball team from New
Richland-Hartland-Ellendale Geneva hits the road for a game, they are driven by
someone special. The Panthers may be the only team in Minnesota with a bus
driver who also won back-to-back state championships as a head coach.
John Schultz stepped down after 11 years as head
coach after NRHEG won Class 2A state championships in 2013 and 2014, completing
three consecutive trips to state. Those teams were led by Carlie Wagner, who is
the second-leading career scorer in state history (behind Braham’s Rebekah
Dahlman) and went on to play at the University of Minnesota.
Schultz is retired from teaching but remains
busy working as a substitute teacher and bus driver, including his duties with
the basketball team (and the volleyball team in the fall). Onika Peterson, who
was one of Schultz’s assistants, became head coach when he retired. She was
more than happy to add Schultz to her staff a couple years ago.
There also was a family dynamic to his return to
the bench. John’s daughter Sidney, a varsity player since seventh grade, is a
junior who reached the 1,000-point milestone last week.
The Panthers won at Blooming Prairie 68-44 on
Tuesday night to improve to 3-0 on the season. After chatting for a few minutes
on the court afterwards, John Schultz excused himself because he had to warm up
the bus for the trip home.
“It's
amazing,” Peterson said. “Why would you not want him on your staff? All the
experience he has, having the state run and back-to-back state titles.”
Sidney was a
little kid when the Panthers had their championship run, and she was on the
inside of it all.
“I was at all
the practices,” she said. “I always tried to listen in on everything and take
it all in as much as I could. I tried to learn from everything they did.”
Another key
player on those teams was Sidney’s sister Jade, who now is a special education
teacher at Maple River (while she misses a day of teaching this week, the
substitute teacher will be her dad).
John has
lots of wonderful memories from the Panthers’ state tournament experiences, including
taking the court at Target Center.
“When we walked
into Target Center for the very first time and that place was packed, that was
breathtaking,” he said. “But the biggest thing was those kids. I had them from third
grade on and they were the toughest kids I’ve ever seen. They were so fine with
their roles, it didn’t matter what it was; they were so happy and proud of what
they did for the team. We didn’t talk about scoring because everybody knew that
we would score, we worried about defense and rebounding and things like that.”
The current players also had John Schultz as a
coach before he returned to the bench. He worked with Sindey’s class beginning
when they were in third grade, which helped make his return to the varsity
staff seamless. John’s career record as a head coach is 225-58.
“He has a
lot of knowledge and the girls are obviously comfortable with him since he's
coached them for so many years,” Peterson said. “And it's always great to have
another set of eyes, and more experienced eyes when he's coached way more games
than I have. It's been really, really great.”
Sidney
Schultz is the 13th girls player from New
Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva to score at least 1,000 points. The list is
a who’s-who of talented athletes, led by the top three of Carlie Wagner and her
younger twin sisters, Maddie and Marnie. Jade Schultz is No. 5 on the list and
current senior Sophie Stork is No. 12.
Sidney is a
5-foot-5 point guard who is talented, relentless and poised.
“She's an absolutely
hardworking, extremely driven athlete,” Peterson said. “I want to call her a
bruiser, but she has more finesse than that. But she's just tough and she has
been that way since she was in seventh grade. She works extremely hard, she
attacks the basket really well. She has a good three-point shot and as a point
guard she sees her teammates well. She gets knocked down, she hops back up, kind
of shakes it off and starts sprinting the length of the court.”
Sidney wore
a big smile when posing for a postgame photo with her dad.
“I’m very
used to it,” she said of being coached by her father. “It's actually
comforting. I'm always looking for him to be there on the bench, cheering me on,
and he's always there.”
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
No comments:
Post a Comment