“Heartbreak and Heroics: Lady Potters Fall Short in State Farm Holiday Classic Showdown”

December 30, 2023
Normal Community 51, Lady Potters 46

The improbable is not the same as the impossible. But it’s close. Look, over there in the deep left corner. The freshman Abby VanMeenen stands unguarded. Of course she’s alone. No one defends against a 6-foot center deep in a corner. Besides, she’s a freshman who has never put up a 3-point shot that mattered. But there she is, with the ball, alone, and now it matters.

It mattered because the Potters were about the be run out of the building. They were down a dozen, 44-32, in the first seconds of the fourth quarter. Normal Community’s defenders, long, tall, and quick, have made the team a Class 4A state championship contender, coming in on a 10-game winning streak, losers once in 17 games. They thought it was OK to let the big kid play way out there.

What VanMeenen did, left alone, was shoot the thing.

She shot it from behind the arc, way far away from a big’s safe place in the paint, way out there where the little people play. And . . .

. .. BANG!

Impossible, no. Improbable, maybe not. For in the next six minutes, Abby VanMeenen, rookie, did veterans' stuff. At 45-37, she did a spin move in the paint and banged it in off the glass. At 45-39, again. At 47-39, again.

Now it was 47-41, with 2:08 to play, and from there everything happened everywhere all at once with the vice of time closing on everyone, confusion everywhere, teenagers throwing themselves into loose-ball pileups, coaches screaming TIMEOUT!, and one reporter scribbling into his notebook. . . .

“47-43, Iz pass to AVM, LU."

Meaning Izzy Hutchinson got the ball to Abby VanMeenen for a layup. And then . .

“B says stay the course defensively. We’re going jumping and trapping. I’m OK if you get beat, but foul before they shoot.”

Meaning the Potters' coach, Bob Becker, during a timeout, cast the game as a game of seconds, moments, heartbeats even.
At 1:36, VanMeenen again. Driving into the paint. Strong. Up. Bodying into a defender. Gets the two and a free throw. The Potters were down one, 47-46. The scribbler’s note . . .

“Holy cow.”

From there, in the frenzy of a chaotic last 60 seconds, the ball changing hands twice, both teams with a chance to win the State Farm Holiday Classic, neither could get another decent shot. Normal Community closed it out with four free throws, all in the last 21 seconds.

So, a loss by five points? There was only a heartbeat of difference. Down 12 late, the story can get dark. Or not. You can fold. Or not. You can create a better story, a Vince Lombardi story. The old football coach said his Green Bay Packers never lost. Sometimes they just ran out of time to win. Works for this one, too.

It’s December, and both teams will live to play again, but winning the State Farm traditionally has been a suggestion of what can happen in March, in the state tournaments, when it’s win or go home.

“We are a great team,” Bob Becker said afterwards. He stood outside his team’s locker room. His Class 3A team had played four straight nights against 4A teams, losing by a heartbeat only to the best of them. "Our kids put it all on the line. They left it all on the floor. They’re gassed, their bodies are hurting. But they never quit, and that’s the sign of a champion.”
The Potters had won 10 straight. Now 14-4, they next play Friday at Dunlap.

Abby VanMeenen led Morton’s scoring tonight with 18, her career high. Addy Engel had 16 (and was named to the all-tournament team). Izzy Hutchinson had 4, Payton Hays 3, Katie Brock, 2, Ellie VanMeenen 2, and Anja Ruxlow 1.

“Grit and Glory: Lady Potters Edge Quincy in State Farm Holiday Classic Semifinal”

December 30, 2023
Lady Potters 42, Quincy 40 in overtime

It’s not supposed to be easy. This one wasn’t. They began it late and they kept playing forblessedever. Third quarter, it was 10:09 p.m. I asterisked a note: *YAWN. Then came, oh no, an overtime. It got to be three of four yawns into the night. Afterwards, nigh onto midnight, I asked the Potters’ senior guard, Izzy Hutchinson, “On a normal school night, would you be asleep by now?”

“No, no,” she said. She explained that a high school basketball player’s day starts just after dawn. School. After classes, two hours of basketball practice. Drags herself home for dinner. Unwinds. Time to sleep, but no. Every night, because it’s always there and it never ends, there’s homework.

“I get to bed at 1 a.m.,” Izzy said.

Some overtime games are all-night thrillers. Others are not. This was one of the others. I could write a thousand words on why that is, and they’d put you to sleep. So let’s say this. After back-to-back sensational performances put them in this semifinal of the State Farm Holiday Classic, the Lady Potters ran out of sensations.

What they had is stuff that’s not so spectacular but often more important.

“We’ve got a lot of grit,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said. Then, in one long sentence, this: “I wasn’t at my best tonight, and our team wasn’t at its best tonight, but great teams, and this is a great team, I’m not kidding, I’ve been telling you it’s building, we are a great team, and it was another sign of that tonight that when we were not at our best we did enough to win, and the great teams do that, and tonight we found a way, we made a way.”

Two nights ago, they beat the tournament’s #2 seed. This night, they beat the #3 seed. They’ve now won 10 straight, 14 of 17, and Saturday night they get a shot at #1, Normal Community, with the big trophy at stake.

Let’s cut the thousand-word essay to a couple hundred. Let’s say the Potters offense was a sputtering mess of malfunctions. Only their defense kept it close. Let’s cut to the chase, the fourth quarter, when they came from four down to take their first lead of the night, 36-34, on two Addy Engel buckets, a 3-pointer and a layup after Hutchinson knocked away a Quincy pass, chased it to the baseline, and made a sneaky little pass through a crowd in the paint to Engel, flying to join in the fun.
Ellie VanMeenen’s 3-pointer gave Morton a 39-36 lead with 4:28 to play, but a minute later Quincy made a 3 of its own, and it was 39-all going into overtime.

First possession. Engel again. As it turned out, her lightning-quick layup gave Morton a 41-39 lead that was enough to win. Up by one with 12.9 seconds to play, Hutchinson added a free throw. Quincy managed only an off-balance, awkward prayer of a shot, the prayer unanswered, and we all got to go home.

I’s now 1:21 a.m. in my house. Casey, the cat, is meowing for a snack. The old man will have a beer. Unwinding.

Engel led Morton’s scoring with 22. (“Addy’s all-tournament, all-state,” Becker said.) Hutchinson had 8 points, Abby VanMeenen 5, Ellie VanMeenen 5, Paige Selke 2.

“Dominance Defined: Lady Potters’ Triumph in State Farm Holiday Classic”

December 29, 2023
Lady Potters 54, Chicago Hyde Park 33

Suddenly, this is something. Nine straight wins. Two more and they’re the State Farm Holiday Classic champions. Who’da thunk it? We all should start thunkin’ it. Each win lately is better than the one before. I’d shout out, “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat” except I don’t know what “jumpin’ Jehoshaphat” means except Yosemite Sam used to shout it out in shock and surprise in the Saturday morning cartoons. (Oh, lord. A ‘60s TV allusion. Shoot me.)

Still, something’s going on here.

A #7 seed isn’t expected to do this to a #2. Maybe a 7 could upset a 2. But this wasn’t that. This could’ve been a running clock. This was one team better than the other in every way that matters. This was a beat-down done so convincingly that a Potter senior, Izzy Hutchinson, the everywhere-all-at-once guard, said, “This just shows that we’re better than what all the people think we are. . . . We’re kind of a silent killer.”

“We’re really good now,” freshman Paige Selke said, “and we’ll get better.”

“Our game plan was to own the paint,” senior Addy Engel said, “and we executed it perfectly.”

“I tried to not let #23 get the ball and if she did get it, not let her get to the basket,” freshman Abby VanMeenen said.
Hyde Park’s big center, #23, is a scoring and rebounding machine, 6 feet 4 inches tall. She was made to disappear by the Morton defense that gathered in the paint and pestered the girl to air-ball distraction. The team’s leading scorer, a little 3-point shooting guard, was encouraged by the Potters defense to just try it from out there, and tonight, harassed at all turns, she couldn’t drop one in the ocean from a rowboat. The Chicagoans’ famously frenetic full-court press was so full of holes found by the Potters’ precise passing that in the game’s first 3 ½ minutes, Morton ran off to a 12-0 lead.

And, I swear this to be true, the Potters chased down every bouncing-away rebound, won every wrestling match for possession, and met every physical challenge with their own bump-and-run game.

So I proposed to Bob Becker, the Potters' coach, that a certain physical toughness presented itself on full display tonight.
“Determination,” he said. “That’s what separates good teams from great teams, and we’ve got that in the making.”

That 12-0 start went like this . . .

Selke dropped in a short jumper. Engel threw in a 3-pointer and followed it with five more points. Then Hutchinson a breakaway layup.

“At the start we were terrific,” Becker said. He also said, “I love the mindset. They’re not coming in intimidated. In fact, our goal is to be the intimidator.”

Only once did Hyde Park close within 9 points, and then only for a moment. At 31-22, Ellie VanMeenen, from the top of the key, a 3. A minute later, VanMeenen another 3. Among the many champion-making things the Potters did tonight, what they did most clearly was make every loose ball theirs. About here, a Hutchinson layup scraped off the rim, got batted around and fell to the court under a scramble of bodies before reappearing in Selke’s hands 10 feet out on the right – an easy two.

Magic was happening. Next time down, unseen by everyone except Engel, who threw her the ball, Selke had materialized, wide open, in the paint, two more.

It was 42-27, a minute left in the third quarter. And here, ending all suspense, the best thing. Ellie VanMeenen, at speed, made a layup. She made it at such speed that on landing, she slid through the baseline and crashed into a padded wall, a wall not so padded, though, that the clunk of VanMeenen’s head could not be heard 10 rows up in the bleachers.

“I didn’t realize the wall was that close to the baseline,” she said later.

But, Ellie, that clunk, it didn’t seem to bother you.

“Adrenaline, I guess,” she said. “I just got up and got running.”

Next up for the Potters a semifinal game against Quincy, 8:30 Friday night at Illinois Wesleyan’s Shirk Center.

Four Potters scored in double figures tonight. Engel had 14, Ellie VanMeenen 12, Hutchinson 10, Selke 10. Anja Ruxlow had 3, Abby VanMeenen 3, and Julia Laufenberg 2.

“Morton Potters’ Commanding Victory and Team Unity Shine Bright”

December 27, 2023
Lady Potters 55, Wheaton-Warrenville 38

They were up eight when Abby VanMeenen blocked a layup. The ball landed in Addy Engel’s hands. This is what she did with it. Bye-bye. Gone. Maybe 70 feet in, what?, 10 strides. A layup at the other end. That quick. Second quarter, early, an asterisk on the note, like . . .

*Addy all the way, LU, 7:12.

Then the best part happened. Not that we could hear it from the other end of the gymnasium, but Addy Engel allowed herself a moment. She shouted at the ceiling. A roar? Maybe a laugh. Let’s call it one of those holycowlookwhatwejustdid moments that winners enjoy so much.

Next thing anyone knew, the Potters had gone off on a 15-3 run in 6 ½ minutes that served as advance notice of a 15-0 run in the first 7 ½ minutes of the third quarter en route to a 48-21 lead. This against a Class 4A team with an 8-6 record.,
Nighty-night, as Steph Curry would say.

Or, to quote Addy Engel, “It was really fun.”

Even better, the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, framed it in an historic sense. This team reminds him of moments in the last decade when the Potters won four state championships in five seasons: “They have what our great teams had, that connectedness where they’re excited for each other’s success.”

It was the Potters’ best performance of the season. Defensively, they gave the Wheatons no room; 5 of the losers' first 7 field goals were 3-pointers, largely because Morton’s mix of hustling, aggressive defenses kept them outside the 3-point arc.

Offensively, the Potters attacked relentlessly; each of their starters – Engel, Ellie VanMeenen, Abby VanMeenen, Paige Selke, Izzy Hutchinson – scored in the first quarter.

“We were completely dominant for three quarters,” Becker said, and then the bench got to join in on the laughter.

Their eighth straight victory and 12th in 15 games sent the #7 seeded Potters into a quarter-final game of the State Farm Holiday Classic. At 7 p.m. Thursday night, they play the #2 seed, Chicago Hyde Park, their toughest competition since a loss to Lincoln a month ago.

Engel led the scoring with 19, Ellie VanMeenen had 17. Anja Ruxlow had 6, Izzy Hutchinson 5, Paige Selke 5, Abby VanMeenen 3.

“Pink Hair and Potter Dominance: A Colorful Victory Story”

December 21, 2023
Lady Potters 64, Manual 17

So it was 40-9 when Addy Engel moved quickly to mid-court and launched a shot from 45 feet hoping to beat the buzzer at halftime. Even as the ball was in the air, I, for one, thought, “Huh?”

There were eight seconds left. Time enough for a layup. Time enough to go to Jimmy John’s and come back with a ham sandwich and a Coke.

“I had heard those guys go ‘3, 2, 1, shoot it’ when Manual came down,” Engel said.

Those guys were five Potters fans on the first row at courtside. Pale facsimile that they were, they yet were reminders of the raucous Bobby’s Boys claque that added teen-boy drama to the Potters state championship years of ’15, ’16, ’17, ’19.

Engel figured the 3-2-1-shoot-it chant was designed to mislead Manual’s shooters. Still, when the ball came to her, she said, "I thought the buzzer must be about to go off.”

Instead, her shot clanged high off the backboard, was batted around for a while, and then, as her embarrassment morphed into self-conscious laughter (for what else is a girl to do in such a moment?), it was then and only then, at last, finally, came the happy sound of the buzzer.

“When it didn’t go off,” Engel said, “I looked up and saw there were four seconds to go.”

Well, things happen, y’know? And nice that it happened with the Potters rolling. They moved to 11-3 for the season and take a seven-game winning streak into next week’s State Farm Holiday Classic. Their coach, Bob Becker, was well pleased.
“Obviously, we had challenging games up front,” he said. The allusion was to early-season losses to the region’s best teams (Peoria High, Peoria Notre Dame, Lincoln). “But our girls handled it with the right mindset, and we’re growing from it. . . .Our prospects are pretty promising.”

There’s not much else to say about this game other than one team knew how to play basketball and the other team, now 3-9 for the season….

. . . had a girl with pink hair.

The first time she appeared in my notes, it was about her look. She was #30 for Manual, a 5-foot-6 junior guard, Cameeya Wade. From my seat in the bleachers, I scooched over to Maria Lopko, a Potter alum home for Christmas. I said, “Maria! That pink hair . . . ?”

My fashion consultant said, “A wig, yes.”

Five minutes in, Cameeya Wade, who would turn out to be a charming interview, had taken three shots. Put up under defensive pressure by good defenders, all three shots became airballs, the most noteworthy a 10-footer that seemed destined to scrape the girders way up there, a rocket rising into the atmosphere only to fizzle alarmingly and fall to earth near Cameeya’s feet.
Naturally, I sought out Cameeya afterwards. As an even younger man, I had interviewed Muhammad Ali, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Charlize Theron, seven U.S. Senators, Stan Musial, and a Louisville taxi driver who kept her pony in the back seat. Now it was time to speak to a girls high school basketball player about her pink wig.

“The wig, Cameeya,” I said, “do you have other wigs?”

“A green one,” she said.

“Green?” a man said, that man me, me remembering that Ali, near 40, told me he had dyed his sideburns to get rid of the gray, me remembering a morning when Howard Cosell appeared in his kitchen in his underwear and without his toupee, a sight burned into these eyes forever.

“A black one,” Cameeya said. “And burgundy, and blonde, and this one, the pink.”

“Why,” I said, “the pink tonight?”

“The pink is my prettiest,” she said.

I have no hairdo reports on the Potters. I do have the scoring. Ellie VanMeenen led with 17, all in the first half. Engel had 14, Anja Ruxlow 7, Paige Selke 6, Abby VanMeenen 6, Payton Hays 5, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Emelia Miller 3, Julia Laufenberg 2.

“Potters Shine: Dominating Victory Over East Peoria”

December 19, 2023
Lady Potters 64, East Peoria 42

Once upon a time in my younger days, I got sideways with the East Peoria folks by committing sentences that among other things described their popcorn as too salty in those skinny dollar sacks that cost a dollar too much. Now, all grown up, I have learned to behave myself. Tonight, I come to praise this season’s Raiders.

For the first time in a decade, they were good enough to catch Bob Becker’s attention. The Potters’ coach had seen them lead Mid-Illini favorite Washington by a point after a quarter. They were up on a solid Limestone team at the half. They have a little guard who can score 20 or 25 on you. They had started the season with three straight victories, and when had that ever happened?

So Becker made a strong pre-game suggestion to his Potters.

“We had a goal,” senior captain Addy Engel said, “of keeping Kylie to zero.”

Kyle Moeller is that little guard in question, a 5-foot-4 dynamo who can throw it in from everywhere.

“We did that in the first half,” Engel said.

By then it was 31-13, and Moeller’s 10 points, seven of them in the fourth quarter, meant nothing. The Potters had won their sixth straight game, their ninth in 10 games, and while it’s too soon to be definite about anything, it’s almost/kind of/sorta okay to say that the Potters, on a really good night, can beat most anybody.

We’re near halfway in the regular season, and the Potters are 10-3 with victories over everyone they should have beaten and with losses only to the best teams they’re likely to play before the state tournaments begin.

I, for one, saw that happy future tonight. I saw it in the Potters’ starting lineup. The five were seniors Engel and Izzy Hutchinson, junior Ellie VanMeenen, and freshmen Abby VanMeenen and Paige Selke.

Though they have often played together, I believe it was their first start together. On offense, they bring size, strength, and speed. Defensively, they’re quick, relentless, and mobile enough to play man-to-man, 2-3 zone, box-and-zone, 1-3-1, whatever junk works.

The first six minutes decided it. It was 15-4. Most of the scoring came on a 10-3 run that started with an Abby VanMeenen layup in front of a Hutchinson free throw. Engel followed with a rebound bucket and a 3-pointer. Paige Selke finished it off with a beautiful reverse layup.

"We wanted to come out and never even let them have a thought they could win," Engel said.

Yes, stamping the game as theirs before East Peoria knew it had started, four Potters had scored. Better, they made Kylie Moeller disappear. Out front, Hutchinson and Ellie VanMeenen either collapsed on her themselves or drove her into traps along the sidelines. At the quarter, Morton 19-7.

Morton is now 5-0 in Mid-Illini play. East Peoria, 4-11 overall, is 0-5 in the conference.

Engel led Morton’s scoring with 14. Abby VanMeenen had 13, Selke 10, Ellie VanMeenen 9, Payton Hays 6, Anja Ruxlow 4, Julia Laufenberg 3, Katie Brock 2, Abby Brooks 2, Hutchinson 1.

“Potters Extend Winning Streak with Victory Over Limestone”

December 16, 2023
Lady Potters 60, Limestone 43

She attacked the basket, because that’s what Izzy Hutchinson does. When the shot late in the game came off the glass, she attacked for the rebound, because of course she did. She twisted an ankle and fell. On her back, she saw Limestone going the other way. She got up, limping, and beat the ball to the other end, because of course she did.

What happened at the other end, I have no idea. Just watching Izzy Hutchinson all night had long since worn me out.

Later, Bob Becker, the Potters' coach, talked about his team. “We competed extremely hard tonight. We were just relentless on offensive rebounding, getting second chances, attacking and getting to the free throw line, 20 of 29 I think we were.”

He might have said all that about Hutchinson, a 5-foot-8 senior guard. In the first quarter, she had eight points, a layup and six straight free throws. She had been relentless in the paint, creating a way to the rim where none previously existed, because of course she did. Her motor never idles, and it was running hot when she put the game away early in the third quarter.

The Potters led, 33-22. Limestone clung to hope. But at 4:50 of the third, Hutchinson turned a lazy Limestone pass at mid-court into a break-away bucket. Next time she had the ball, flying downcourt, she slowed up in the lane to do a Patrick Mahomes handoff to Addy Engel arriving a step later.

That made it 37-22 and I counted it over, because of course it was. No way the Potters, now 9-3 and on a five-game winning streak, would contrive to lose from 15 up to a 4-9 team that has lost games by 34 and 50 points. The Potters are now 4-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference, Limestone is 1-3.

Here’s persuasive evidence of the Potters dominance tonight. They began every quarter on a scoring run. They went 7-0 in the first, then 8-1, 8-0, and 10-3 in the fourth. That’s 33-4. Good teams do that. Here are rarer numbers: Morton had more offensive tebounds (17) than Limestone had on defense (15).

If you were wondering, as I was, about the Potters generous use of their bench tonight, here’s how Izzy Hutchinson explained it:

“In practice this week, Coach said a deflection in practice is a turnover in a game. In the game, if you make a mistake, a turnover, anything, if that happens, no matter who you are, the first sub off the bench who gets to the scoring table, replaces you. It’s to kind of hold people accountable.”

A smile here.

“It worked really well for us tonight.”

Bob Becker said, “Turnovers . . . .”

The coach, in his 25th season, put a veteran's curled-lip spin on that word, turnovers, as if speaking of a reptile, the evil yellow-bellied turnover, poisonous to all basketball coaches. I was not surprised to hear him go on.

“Turnovers can drive me personally insane,” he said. “They can make me angry, upset, and probably not the most positive human being.” (Morton 12 turnovers, Limedtone 22)

So it was fine by him that his bench players rushed to replace people making turnovers.

“Whoever gets there first, plays,” he said.

Engel led the Potters with 18 points, 7 rebounds. Hutchinson had 15 and 9. Ellie VanMeenen scored 9, Paige Selke 8, Payton Hays 5, Abby VanMeenen 2, Katie Brock 2, Anja Ruxlow 1.

“Potters Rally in Second Half to Secure Win Over Pekin”

December 12, 2023
Lady Potters 45, Pekin 22

At the half, it was 17-15, Morton. To give you an idea of how exciting it wasn’t, Pekin scored 6 points in the first quarter, Morton 4 in the second. Had I had brought along reading material – yes, the L.L. Bean Christmas catalogue – I would have ordered new duck hunting gear, though I’ve never been duck hunting in my whole entire life.

Page 38 of the catalogue advertised Bean Boots, lined with flannel, $219.

Wait.

$219, for boots with pajamas in ‘em?

Anyway, praise be, there came a halftime intermission during which game-changing decisions were made that allowed first-half transgressions to be redeemed by second-half good works.

I mean, after starting 1-for-11 on 3-point tries, in the second half the Potters tried three 3’s, making none, as in none, nada, zero, one fewer than one. Instead, they made 14 field goals, all from point-blank range, a dozen layups and two rebound put-backs. “Attacking the basket,” to quote the Potters coach, Bob Becker, they won the second half, 28-7.

I hurry to say that not all “layups” are alike. Thinking here of an Izzy Hutchinson “layup” that comes at the end of a long, long, long sprinter’s stride around defenders that takes her to a place where she can sneak the ball over the rim. Thinking here of an Ellie VanMeenen “layup” as the exclamation point on a sentence that begins way out there beyond the arc and winds it way to conclusion in the paint.

All that, and more, now thinking of successive Addy Engel field goals on a night she scored 14 points, all on “layups.”
The first came when she crashed into a Pekin defender, did not say excuse me, and with her left hand, her natural hand, put the ball off the board.

The second “layup” was a beauty, a wonder to behold, and more pleasing to these eyes than any of a thousand thunderous dunks by big boys with no imagination.

What Engel did was drive down the left side of the lane. At speed, she rose off her right foot. If not fully turned away from the hoop, she was most the way turned. Then, with her right hand, her off-hand, she flipped the ball back over her head and against the glass. Two points the hard way, a “layup” that, if the rulesmakers had any sense, should have been worth three.
Could she even see the rim?

"Kind of," she said, "for a second."

“I didn’t teach her that,” Becker said. “If I tried that, I’d hurt myself.”

The coach declared it a good night, half of it anyway. “We were dominant. Much more purposeful at both ends in the second half.” Then he raised the stakes to capital letters. “We were DOMINANT in the paint.”

With a fourth straight victory and seventh in eight games, the Potters are 8-3 oversll (with three home games to play before Christmas) and 3-0 in the Mid-Illini Conference. Though Pekin is now 2-6 for the season, it had been competitive against good teams, losing by 11 to Class 4A power Normal Community and by 13 to Mid-Illini contender Dunlap.

Engel’s 14 led Morton’s scoring. Freshman Paige Selke, making the first start of her career, had 13. Ellie VanMeenen scored 8, sister Abby had 4, Hutchinson 3, and Magda Lopko 3.

“Resilience Leads Lady Potters to Victory”

December 9, 2023
Lady Potters 46, Macomb 26

Ellie VanMeenen ker-RASHED to the floor. She’d gone up for a 3-pointer from the left side. Fouled, she fell backwards. From across the way, we heard a CLUNK. Me, I would need an ambulance. Not VanMeenen.

She is 16 years old. With the wonderful invulnerability of youth, VanMeenen bounced up and made all the Potters feel better. She made her three points the hard way, three free throws, nothing but net each time.

The game’s first 24 minutes, she scored three points. The first two minutes of the fourth quarter, she scored eight. Two and a half minutes later, the Potters completed a 17-1 run for a 44-22 lead.

Until then, the Potters had been soporific. Maybe the hour-and-so bus ride north and west to Abingdon mellowed ‘em out. Maybe the sounds of silence in Abingdon’s little gym did it. Maybe no one much cared about the Abingdon/Avon Shootout with 16 anonymous teams playing eight games from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Well, we know Peoria Notre Dame too well.)

This much is certain. The Potters aren’t where they want to be. They want to be Class 3A state tournament contenders. Macomb is a Class 2A team with no size and no strength that had lost seven of 11 games, including one this week by 46 points.
Against that team, the Potters scored 11 points in the first quarter, 13 in the second, and THREE in the third. Scoring 19 in the fourth made it a runaway, and the Potters won’t throw back the W, their sixth in the last seven games, those by an average of 21 points a game.

And yet . . .

“We weren’t with it for three quarters of the game,” the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, said.

Truth is, no one was much with it. No buzz in the neat little gym. One team represented two villages with a combined population of 336.

“Like, the gym empty,” VanMeenen said.

Addy Engel, a senior captain and the Potters’ leading scorer, said there’s a fix for the not-with-it, empty-gym problem.
“We have to create the energy ourselves,” she said. “We have to create it on the court and on the bench.”

Now 7-3 for the season, the Potters next play at Pekin, a 5:30 p.m. game with the Morton-Pekin boys' teams following.

Engel led the scoring today with 18 (11 in the second quarter). Ellie VanMeenen had 13 (10 in the fourth). Abby VanMeenen and Paige Selke had 4 each, Anja Ruxlow 3, Izzy Hutchinson 2, and Magda Lopko 2.

“A Night of Unity: Lady Potters Triumph Against Metamora”

December 5, 2023
Lady Potters 56, Metamora 35

Emelia Miller’s 3-point try from the right corner was beautiful. It had the kind of perfect shooter’s spin Steph Curry puts on ‘em. Emelia’s try was not an important shot in any way except in every way. The game was a rout when Emelia’s beauty went up. Goes in, great. Doesn’t go in, great.

Great either way, for on this night, every Potter had a hand in that shot. Every Potter on the bench rose up to see it. They wanted it for Emelia, a senior who maybe has scored once this season, who plays only briefly, who may be the 9th player in sometimes, or maybe she’s the 12th, but who’s counting?

Somehow, and don’t ask me how, but somehow, and I know it to be true, because, hey, I was a young man when I started watching these Lady Potters teams, a very young man, and now I’m a great-grandfather (twice), and I know this to be true. Somehow, from the stars to the 9th, 10th, 15th girl on the bench, they all believe in the sisterhood of Potters.

So when Emelia’s 3-pointer was in the air, even a great-grandfather rooted for that beauty to go in, just to hear the roof-raising racket the other Potters leaping in celebration would create. Yes, there’ll be a time for an Emelia Miller 3, but the time was not tonight, not that it mattered, for on this night, Emelia’s mother, Rachel, stood at midcourt afterwards, tears in her eyes, a stone in her hands.

The stone was carved by the grandfather of Emelia’s teammates, Ellie and Abby VanMennen. You see the picture here. You see Rachel smiling through her tears. Her husband, Emelia’s father, died a summer ago, 49 years old, cancer, and the grief is still in her. The Potters players, on their own, raised money for the Illinois Cancer Fund. Tonight they warmed up in green T-shirts bearing the legend, “TEAM MILLER.”

Holding the stone, Rachel Miller said, “The girls really supported Emelia through this.” She stopped to breathe. “They really are Emelia’s rock.”

Emelia, there by her mother, was all smiles.

Such a night it was.

She said, “I have the best teammates in the world.”

I have a rule of sportswriting. If the game is really not much of a game, find something else to say. And if the something else turns out to be a rock, write about the rock, which is, after all, the perfect symbol for what Magda Lopko said about the night. Magda Lopko is a senior, maybe 8th on the bench some nights, and she said the team had wanted to acknowledge the Millers’ loss last season. But it was too soon.

So they waited for tonight. “Winning is fun,” Lopko said. “But getting your sisters together is the best part of all.”
The basketball. Oh, yes, The basketball. “A tale of two halves,” the coach, Bob Becker, said, proving he was once an aspiring sportswriter. First half, Morton’s motion offense was mostly wasted motion, with lots of cutting and almost no passing. The Potters led at halftime, 19-15, and a great-grandfather, for one, thought of the nap he had missed earlier that day.

It was 26-20 when the Potters woke up. In the next minute and one second, they went on a 9-0 run: a Paige Selke 3, a three-point drive by Izzy Hutchinson, and an Anja Ruxlow 3 from the left corner that caused Becker to fist-bump assistant coach Dakota Neisen in celebration of, at last, a play that worked the way it was drawn up.

From there, no contest. The lead grew to 51-27 in exactly 8 minutes.

“We had good energy tonight, on the court and on the bench,” senior captain Addy Engel said. “We’re in a good spot now.”
Morton now begins a stretch of five games against undistinguished teams. Becker said. “We want to win out going into the State Farm tournament.” That tournament begins Dec. 27.

Morton is now 6-3, 2-0 in Mid-Illini play. Metamora is 2-7, 0-2.

Hutchinson and Engel led the Potters’ scoring with 13 apiece. Ellie VanMeenen and Ruxlow had 10 each, Selke and Payton Hays 5 each.

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“A Rollercoaster Victory: Lady Potters Triumph Against Canton”

December 1, 2023
Lady Potters 52 Canton 43

The Potters now have won the five games they were supposed to win. They had a chance in their three losses, beaten late in the going by teams that can win state championships. So there is that. They are good and getting better.

Still, please, enough with the nervous-making. First, the drive from Morton to Canton. You risk well-being if not life itsownself by the hour’s drive on Route 9, all bumpity-bumpity, twisting and turning. In the dark of night, you pass hollow-eyed ghost towers, a gi-normous plant creating God knows what evil chemicals, and moonlit duck hunters’ swamplands a foot off your door handle. When you reach Canton’s lights of pizza-place civilization, you turn north at a cemetery. Finally, praise be, you arrive at lovely old Alice Ingersoll gymnasium.

Then comes the entertainment, a new kind of adventure, a basketball game that is an hour of worry, doubt, and distress.

Home now, midnight coming, I need a beer.

Twice when victory seemed certain and only unimagined mistakes could have denied them the W, the Potters failed at the simplest task. Twice in a minute, they couldn’t get the ball in-bounds inside five seconds. They were up by eight with 3:43 to play. About then, the basketball god Panic must have whispered scary stuff to the Potters.

Twice, five-second violations. Twice they gave the ball to Canton under its own basket. That’s twice, as two times one, twice in a minute.

I, for one, had never seen that before.

But here’s the wonder. When it mattered most, the Potters were at their best.

I loved it when a 5-foot-10 freshman, Paige Selke, made a move along the baseline and went up big-time strong for a layup off the square. That made it 45-35 at 2:40.

Canton, now 6-4 for the season, came back with a 3-pointer, its eighth, its offense pushed outside by the Potters’ aggressive defenders. From there, the game’s deciding last minutes belonged to the Potters. More specifically, crunch time belonged to the veteran star, Ellie VanMeenen.

Between her team’s defensive stops, handling the ball against Canton’s desperate full-court press, VanMeenen went to the free throw line six times in the last minute and two seconds. Until then, the Potters had made 3 of 9 free throws. Miserable.

At 1:02, VanMeenen made two.

At :27.5, two more.

At :08.5, her fifth and sixth in a row.

In the last two minutes, then, with victory there to be taken, VanMeenen took it. In those minutes, Morton outscored Canton 7-3. We all know coach Bob Becker’s formula for victory. Win the game’s first three minutes, the second half’s first three minutes, and the game’s last three minutes. Tonight, Morton won those time periods, 8-0, 7-4, and 9-3. That comes to 24-7.

Once Morton had that 8-0 lead (built on 3’s by Izzy Hutchinson and Addy Engel), Canton came no closer than four. Becker was not always pleased with his team’s defense. (Its trapping defense sometimes lost track of Canton people in the paint.) Nor was he always pleased with his team’s offense. (Again too many turnovers, 14, including those unforgivables suggested by Panic’s whispers.)

Still, he saw enough good stuff in this Mid-Illini Conference opener to say, “We’re going to be a contender.”

Oh, and of VanMeenen’s free throws in the last minute, Becker said she had made 45 straight in a practice session this week. He also reached back to a Potter all-time great for comparison.

“With the game on the line, Ellie knocked ‘em down," he said. "She looked like Chandler Ryan out there,” Chandler Ryan legendary for a 2015 state-championship run when, in the six state tournament games, she went 51 for 52 at the line and declared herself unafraid of the big moment. “I knew,” she said, “I wouldn’t miss.”

VanMeenen had a touch of that moxie in her tonight.

When I suggested she wanted the ball at the end, she said, “Yeah.”

I asked when she had felt like that before.

“Probably never,” she said, smiling.

She led Morton’s scoring with 21. Hutchinson had 12 (with 5 steals) Engel 8, Selke 7, and Abby VanMeenen 4 (a freshman making her first start, also had 7 rebounds).

“Lincoln’s Quiet Dominance: Lady Potters Encounter Tough Challenge”

November 25, 2023
Lincoln 66, Lady Potters 53

I swear, Lincoln is quiet.

It’s easy to lose to Lincoln. They’re really good. They’re small, no starter taller than 5-foot-9. But they’re all seniors back from the team that was 37-0 when it lost the Class 3A championship game in March. They’re a pleasure to watch. They have an all-state guard who can beat you by herself. On both ends of the court, they know where the ball is going and why it’s going there. They waste no effort. The five move as one. To explain the inexplicable, that great guard, Kloe Froebe, said it’s simple: “We’ve been playing together since kindergarten. The first six, forever.”

Other teams play as if their hair is on fire.

Other teams practice frenzy.

Lincoln gets quiet.

This quiet . . .
    The fog comes
       on little cat feet

Tonight, because Lincoln never gave Morton a chance, I had time to think of Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Fog.” I mean, hey, Sandburg was a Lincoln biographer, and here was Lincoln High School’s extraordinary basketball team. Reason enough for a sportswriter to work the old poet’s stuff into a story.

Late in the third quarter, quietly, on little cat feet, sprinting to the hoop from the deep right corner, here came Lincoln’s rawboned Becca Heitzig, #4 on your program.

I didn’t see her moving. And Froebe, her back to the basket, could not have seen Heitzig. The difference is, those two had done this thing a hundred times. Froebe knew where Heitzig would be. It was a play called “41.”

“41” calls for Froebe to keep the ball out front. She takes the dribble left, spins to her right, and then . . .

She bounces a pass 20 feet down the right side of the free throw lane where . . .

It settles into Becca Heitzig’s hands for an uncontested layup. (Heitzig seemed to have materialized from vapor.) There were seven seconds left in the third quarter. Sportswriters call that a dagger. It kills. Morton was dead, down 56-43 going into the last quarter.

It’s one thing to lose, and no one likes that, so losing for the third time in seven games this season was no fun for the Potters. Against Lincoln’s full-court zone press and its 2-3 zone, Morton handled the ball poorly. The Potters also seemed a step behind Lincoln’s every move on offense.

They certainly had no answer for Froeboe, whose 33 points were scored so quietly as to go unnoticed. She just seemed to be in the right place all night long. A rebound bucket here, a sneaky layup there, a 3-pointer from the top of the key, a passel of free throws when she’s fouled on yet another drive down the lane.

Against all this Lincolnian quiet and calm, the Potters were made to look frenetic. They created a rogue’s gallery of turnovers, allowing daylight burglary at midcourt, thinking they could get away with cross-court lobs. The ugliest turnover came when Froebe locked her arms around the ball held overhead by a Potter, ripped it away and tossed it downcourt, as if she knew that Becca Heitzig – that Heitzig wraith – would be flying that way for another easy two.

That’s the kind of thing that is a coach’s greatest frustration. The Potters have lost to three teams with state-championship possibilities, Peoria High, Peoria Notre Dame, and Lincoln. In each game, Morton has been within reach of victory deep into the fourth quarter. Good stuff there. But the Potters’ coach, Bob Becker, is unhappy with his team’s mediocre free-throw shooting and its “self-inflicted wounds” of turnovers and defensive lapses.

Still, he can imagine success in the Mid-Illini Conference as soon as his two front-line freshman, Abby VanMeenen and Paige Selke, adapt to competition against big, strong veterans. “We’ve learned in this tournament that we can score,” Becker said. The Potters scored 71, 75, 56, and 50. And he has said, “In another month, we can be very good.”

Stay tuned.

Addy Engel led Morton’s scoring with 14. Izzy Hutchinson had 12, Abby VanMeenen 10, Ellie VanMeenen 8, Paige Selke 4, Anja Ruxlow 2.

(A writerly turnover: The Potters are 4-3 for the season, not the 3-3 suggested in an earlier version of this.)

“Grinding it Out: Lady Potters Prevail Against Richwoods”

November 25, 2023
Lady Potters 56, Richwoods 49

Today's morning-game victory, done with more grit than finesse, put the Potters in what would be the championship game of their Thanksgiving tournament, against Lincoln this evening. Both teams are 3-0 in the round robin event.

Richwoods was the bigger, stronger team, largely dependent on committing so many pushing/hacking fouls that referees grow tired of blowing their whistles. Still, so egregious was the physicality, the Potters shot lots of free throws, and they're having trouble there this season, today's trouble meaning they made only 24 of 41, 58.5 percent.

So Richwoods banged its way to a 40-all tie with 5:36 to play. From there, Morton gathered its bruised pieces long enough to go on game-turning 14-3 run.

Addy Engel led Morton's scoring with 16. Ellie VanMeenen had 15, Izzy Hutchinson 12, Abby VanMeenen 6, Paige Selke 5, and Anja Ruxlow 2.

“IZ’s Heroics Lead Lady Potters to Dominant Win Over East St. Louis”

November 24, 2023
Lady Potters 75, East St. Louis 40

Below these words is a photograph of a reporter’s notebook. Ruined by a hundred years of notetaking, he cannot do cursive. His printing is hieroglyphs legible to few people (one). As luck would have it, he is here to decipher the lower right quarter of that notebook page where IZ becomes famous.

IZ is code for Izzy Hutchinson, a senior Potter.

“IZ FBLU 7:43” is a layup off a fast break at 7:43 of the third quarter. Then comes a 3-pointer, 6:25. Followed by a layup, 6:02. (She made a pass to Katie Brock and got it back). Then another 3, 5:29.

In two minutes and 14 seconds, IZ racked up 10 points. Earlier, in the second quarter, she had scored 10 in a minute and 12 seconds. Four LUs and two FTs.

That’s 20 points in three minutes and 47 seconds. She scored on the run, off a steal, from outside and underneath, right-handed and left-handed. She took nine shots this game, made ‘em all. She had five steals, three assists and three rebounds. She seemed to be everywhere all at once.

But, hey, let’s play what-if. What if a girl did that all day? The iPhone calculator says if IZ scored at that rate for 32 minutes, she would score 169.16 points.

“Holy cow,” IZ said, a girl delighted with her mortal number, a career-high 22 points.

Or to quote her coach, Bob Becker, “That was fun.” Instead of the nervous-making, exhausting losses to very good teams in the season’s first week, today’s performances were walks in the park.

The Potters won running-clock games, in the morning over Champaign Central by 34 points, in the afternoon by 35. All 14 Potters played today, 12 scored, and Izzy agreed with Becker: “We were having fun on the court today, we were moving the ball, getting good shots. We got going on runs that pumped us up.”

Against East St. Louis, the Potters scored the game’s first 12 points, and they later had 10-0 and 14-0 runs. Do the math on that – oh, no, not more numbers! -- instead, let’s talk about the Potters’ last two games of the tournament tomorrow, in the morning against an old tormentor, Peoria Richwoods, and in the afternoon against Lincoln, runner-up in the Class 3A state tournament last season with all its starters back.

Today, Richwoods beat East St. Louis, 71-27. Hmm.

Also today, Lincoln beat Champaign Central, 88-19. Hmmm.

“Tomorrow,” Becker said, “gets tougher.”

“It’s nothing that we can’t handle,” Izzy Hutchinson said.

IZ’s 22 led Morton’s scoring against East St. Louis. Addy Engel had 18, Ellie VanMeenen 10, Abby VanMeenen 9, Paige Selke 5, Emilia Miller 4, Magda Lopko 3, Jorja Farrell 2, Julia Laufenberg 2.

Morning report follows….
No photo description available.

“Dominant Display: Lady Potters Cruise to Victory Over Champaign Central”

November 24, 2023
Lady Potters 77, Champaign Central 43

In the morning half of a day-night twin bill to open their Thanksgiving tournament, the Potters allowed the Champaign girls no hope.

At halftime, already up 45-21, coach Bob Becker said, " I challenged 'em to be dominant" in the third quarter, "and we actually were dominant."

They scored the quarter's first 10 points and used a 25-4 run to build a 71-32 lead and set a running clock in motion.

A veteran and a rookie set the tone. Freshman Abby VanMeenen scored all 11 of her points in the quarter (7 in one 47-second burst). And senior Addy Engel had 10 of her career-high 29.

Ellie VanMeenen and Anja Ruxlow each had 9, Paige Selke 8, Izzy Hutchinson 4, Katie Brock 3, and Magda Lopko and Bennett Swearingen had 2 apiece.