Brian Metteer knew when he was hired as the head coach of the Seckman girls basketball program that the seeds of success for the junior varsity and varsity teams would be sown at the elementary and middle school levels.
“You’ve got to work with feeder programs, that’s just the reality of it,” Metteer said. “If those kids aren’t playing basketball in fourth grade, fifth, six, seventh, eighth, and then they come in as freshmen relatively new to the game, then you’re already years behind.”
Four seasons into his tenure with the Jaguars, Metteer said he is seeing the fruits of that labor. After a pair of five-win seasons in Metteer’s first two seasons at the helm, Seckman (11-14) just wrapped up its second straight 11-win campaign, falling to eventually district champion Jackson 51-23 Feb. 26 in the Class 5 District 1 tournament.
“We’re playing a better brand of basketball, higher quality basketball,” Metteer said. “Certainly there are still things we need to do to get over that hump and get where we want to be, but I think we’re much closer to that now.”
And Metteer said it’s in large part due to a love of the sport that the Seckman feeder program has helped nurture. Where in years past, most members of the basketball team may have leaned more towards soccer or softball, Metteer said many girls now follow hoop dreams.
“We’ve been able to change that culture, and now I’d say for 75 or 80 percent of the girls, basketball comes first,” he said.
It’s that type of approach that has led to on-court success for Jaguars senior Sam Stuckmeyer, who finished sixth in the final year of the Suburban West Conference with a scoring average of 13.2 points per game. Stuckmeyer also finished third in 3-point shooting percentage among league players who attempted more than 50 shots, hitting 58 of 163 (37.7 percent), and Metteer said Stuckmeyer, one of three seniors on the Seckman squad to post a GPA of 3.9 or higher, has signed to play for Truman State University.
“She’s a special talent,” Metteer said. “I think it stems from her sort of being a gym rat. She’s obsessed with the sport, more so than anybody else I’ve ever had, and it’s that edge that is going to allow her to go on and play at the next level.”
Another senior with a different kind of athletic background, Maranda Kriese, tied for second on the team in scoring at 8.3 points and was second with 5.8 rebounds. Metteer said Kriese had likely never touched a basketball before her freshman year at Seckman, but the 5-10 post player gave the Jaguars an inside presence.
“Her freshman year, I told her to just come into the gym and give it a try, and she’s so detail-oriented, she ran with it and became very successful for us,” Metteer said. “She really gave us that size that we needed.”
With just four seniors on this year’s team, including Lauren Stamm and Morgan Fowler, Metteer said the Jaguars will return a lot of experience next season, and he is confident that the Seckman feeder program will continue sending him talented, hungry basketball players. And with 10 to 12 of this year’s sophomores playing together on a select team during the spring and summer, Metteer said Seckman is on its way to building a tradition of success.
“We have a lot of talent coming up,” he said.
“To have a core of those girls who are going to keep playing regularly together is going to help big time. First of all, it’s that they want to, they want to keep playing and keep getting better, and second, that core is going to challenge everyone, because they’re constantly in the gym getting better, and by nature, if somebody else is getting better and you’re not, then you’re getting worse. But I think the girls that are returning next year will continue this trend of playing better basketball.”
Late-season changes feed hopes for Seckman’s future
A necessary tweak to Seckman’s offensive approach late in the season gave Jaguars head coach Travis Williams a possible glimpse at the team’s future.
Heading into February, with eight games remaining in the regular season, the Jaguars owned a 6-9 record, and offensively, they had been held to less than 43 points in just three of those 15 games. But Seckman would lose its first three games in February by a combined score of 215-111, scoring 42 points or less in all three games, as Williams said opposing defenses were starting to take away what had been working for the Jaguars offense.
“A lot of teams started playing zone defense against us, forcing us to shoot,” Williams said. “We had been getting the ball down to the post pretty much whenever we wanted earlier in the season, but defenses focused on that, forced us to shoot, and we didn’t shoot very well.”
So Williams and his coaching staff made some changes.
“We decided to focus on getting points in transition rather than the half-court set,” Williams said. “We put some different combinations out on the floor, different kids that were typically not playing together, and had them running a little bit more.”
The results were encouraging. Although Seckman dropped its next four contests, three of them were by margins of eight points or less, and the Jaguars eclipsed the 60-point mark twice. Seckman (7-17) closed the regular season with a 46-43 win over Rockwood Summit before falling to Jackson 84-37 in the Class 5 District 1 Tournament.
“One of goals was to increase our win total from a year ago,” said Williams, whose team went 5-20 the previous season. “We did not put a number on it, we just wanted to increase it, which we did.”
And the run-and-gun offensive scheme could be key to Seckman’s hopes of continuing the upward trend, as Williams said three of the biggest beneficiaries of the late-season adjustment were juniors Jacob Duester, Davis Mason and Elmir Vrebec.
“A year from now is a long time but looking forward, I think we’re definitely going to have to get the ball up the floor a lot more quickly and look to score before the defense sets up,” Williams said. “We started scoring a lot more points with the different lineup that we put out there, and those boys stepped in and started playing really well.”
Seckman will still have plenty of holes to fill from this year’s squad. The Jaguars lose seven players to graduation, including three of their top four scorers and the team’s best rebounders: Nate Robinson (10.6 points per game, 6.5 rebounds per game), Dylan Clark (8.7, 6) and Jacob Waeltermann (7.9, 6.5), who also led the team with 45 blocked shots.
“Those seniors brought a lot of leadership,” Williams said.
But even though the offseason has barely begun, Williams said he is pleased with the commitment he has seen from his younger players.
“I’ve had a couple players approach me already, wanting to get into the weight room, wanting to start the offseason program,” Williams said.
“To have kids who are wanting to put their time and effort in without that being initiated by the coach and to do it without the coach watching, that’s huge. That means they truly want to get better at what they’re doing. You can only do so much as a coach trying to encourage the players to do that work. You’ve really got to have the mindset of wanting to get in there for yourself and for your teammates, rather than the coach wants you to. Knowing that, I expect big things from that group coming up.”