By Matt Turer — mturer@ky3.com
@MattTurer
Up in little Wheatland, there’s a superstitious group of girls quickly getting used to winning a lot of basketball games.
After tying the program’s win record (22) a season ago, the Lady Mules have already surpassed that mark with a 23-2 record this season heading into Saturday night’s district championship against rival Hermitage. The questions then bears asking: At a Class 1 school with a grade 7-12 enrollment of just over 125 students and a team that has won as many games the past two seasons as the previous six (45), what’s the big secret?
“We’re very superstitious,” junior Gracie Fatino said. “We do the same thing before every game.”
Workout? No. Eat a certain meal? Wrong again. Matching socks? OK, just tell me.
“We have these little stickers with puppy dogs and kittens on them and we put them on the inside of our jerseys before every game. We did it one game and we won. Done it every game since.”
They have dogs and kittens on them, Fatino says.
“And they say meow. And ruff.”
Whatever works. In fact, whatever works is a good starting point to how this team got here.
Not long ago, third-year head coach Jeremiah Bryan was a baseball player. Today, he’s leading Wheatland’s girls basketball renaissance. Whatever works.
“I didn’t know this good of a group was coming up [when I took the job]”, Bryan said. “I knew there was a couple decent players in middle school. I was told by a few people it’d be a slow year and I’d just have to patient and I had some players coming in a year or two.”
Bryan’s first season went better than expected: six wins. Not great, but it was progress.
To truly appreciate Wheatland’s recent success, look through the 2008-09 to 2014-15 seasons that produced these win totals: 9, 11, 11, 3, 2, 3, 6. With two more wins this year alone, Wheatland will have matched its total victories from 2010-11 to 2014-15, a five-year span. This season alone, sophomore Madi Sutt (21.2 PPG, 11.0 RPG), junior Gracie Fatino (17.7 PPG) and senior Ashley Horton (6.2 PPG) have all reached 1,000-career points while freshman Aleah Asare (11.1 PPG) is well on her way.
“I was on the high school team that was struggling,” Wheatland senior Ashley Horton said. “I knew we had a couple kids coming up and I knew they’d make us better. We always had the potential to make us better than we had been.”
Horton is the only member of Wheatland’s young roster who had to experience more than one season of what can safely be called the dark years. (Translation: this success isn’t ending anytime soon).
“We did have one coach that wasn’t very good,” Horton said. “We tried our best to get through things. He would be on his phone the whole practice and would bring us donuts. We pretty much had to practice on our own and do what we could do.”
Bryan’s first year as head coach came as a bit of a shock to Wheatland, which was suddenly ditching donuts for dumbbells.
“We started doing stuff for the summer and they were like, ‘What? Summer stuff?’ But then we got in the weight room and they kept asking to lift more and practice more every chance they could. Which was surprising with the history,” Bryan said.
Ask these girls who can lift the most? You’ll get awkward laughter and silence.
“They’re all pretty small,” Bryan said. “They’re not extremely strong.”
But though she be but little, Wheatland is fierce. Just look to Horton.
An All-Polk County League selection as a junior, Horton fell victim to a complete ACL tear in a 58-42 loss to Walnut Grove earlier this season but has only missed one game, playing instead with a knee brace and opting into surgery after the season. (Horton was averaging 17.0 PPG before her injury).
“One of the motivations she had there was probably to get back at Walnut Grove and get a chance to play them again,” Bryan said and Horton confirmed. “I think they really want to beat them. I really want to beat them.”
Wheatland may get that chance, but after splitting the season series with Hermitage, there’s no looking past Saturday’s district title game.
“We’ve got probably one of the best districts around,” Fatino said. “We know there’s good competition and people who can hang with us so we’re not going to overlook anyone.”
