A special senior class for Waterloo bids farewell to Fred Brookover Gymnasium

ATWATER TWP. — On Feb. 1, Jason Wise took to Facebook to share 378 words of pure love about his five seniors.

The longtime Waterloo basketball coach talked about what makes the Class of 2023 special to him in advance of Senior Night, noting that this group “has been part of my family since they were seven or eight years old,” due in part to his nephew, Ryan, being one of those five seniors.

"It was nice of him," Ryan Wise said of his uncle's Facebook post. "I think we do mean a lot to him. Navarre [Alhassan] and all those other seniors grew up with me and he's seen us since we were kids and we've always been involved. Me and Navarre were the ball boys for the high school team."

In his post, Jason Wise wrote about the accomplishments of previous senior classes, including the one that won 24 games in 2020, and then about the personal connection he has with his current group of seniors.

"It's special to see how much this group of kids has grown up," Wise said. "Maybe it's more from a personal level, but I've seen more growth in this year's seniors than I have maybe in any other class I've seen."

Wise’s post was beautiful, but it did contain one mistake.

He asked Vikings fans to head over to Fred Brookover Gymnasium for their “last home game” Feb. 3 against Mineral Ridge.

It just so happened that thanks to Waterloo’s considerable success this season, it earned a first-round tournament game on its home court, meaning that final game at Fred Brookover Gymnasium will actually take place Tuesday night.

“It's definitely sad,” Ryan Wise said. “Growing up playing in that gym, middle school games, high school games, watching games in there, I’m still planning on being back, but it's definitely going to be emotional.”

A journey that started with the Hoosiers

The Vikings’ journey might end tonight in Atwater Township.

Or it might end in Newton Falls, where Waterloo would head next with a win.

Or in Niles, where the Vikings’ district games would be held, or Canton or Dayton.

For several seniors, this year's journey began at the Hoosier Gym in Knightstown, Indiana.

That’s where seniors Alhassan, Aidan Hall, Anthony Podojil and Ryan Wise joined coach Wise to watch “Hoosiers” in the historic gym where the movie was shot.

“After last season, I felt we needed to do something maybe to bring them more together and make them realize that it's not just what we're doing on the floor, but it's what we're doing outside,” Wise said. “Like, we can be friends on and off the floor and come together and play as a team and we would be better off for it. It was just something that I thought would be cool.”

Not that this team needed much help bonding, given how long those seniors have been together.

"I've been best friends with Ryan since I was in kindergarten, so I've known them since I was little," Alhassan said. "He's like a family member to me. Everyone in the Wise family is my family pretty much."

Their shared memories include a flag football game at Ryan Wise's fourth-grade birthday party. In that game, Jason Wise played quarterback and Podojil demanded the football as a wide receiver.

"Not much changed," said Ryan Wise with a laugh. "He always wants the ball. He can shoot it, that's for sure."

While Podojil has long excelled as a shooter and Alhassan emerged as a star scorer, Wise adeptly handled a growth spurt that moved him from point guard to a very versatile weapon.

"I was 5-3 my freshman year and I've kind of carried that ability, vision on the court, in finishing in different ways around bigs," Wise said. "[It] definitely helps a lot down low, but, yeah, I had a nine-inch growth spurt in a year. Things really changed."

And Hall changed quite a bit as well, battling back from a meniscus tear that held him out as a sophomore and really coming into his own as a senior, on and off the court.

"He's just one of those kids that play hard and a little chippy," Ryan Wise said. "[He] will go out there and get those loose balls and give 110 percent every night."

Speaking of hard work, Josh Ross was a new addition, having never played before last season, but immediately stood out for the endless time he spent before and after practice at Fred Brookover Gymnasium.

Long live 'The Revival'

When the Vikings fell one game (and pandemic) short of the state tournament in 2020, they called it a revival.

A revival of a rich basketball history at Waterloo, including many winning seasons under John Herchek. But the Vikings had some hard years between the legend and the revival, including a 1-22 season in 2015-2016. That season and other losing campaigns hurt Wise, who played for and coached under Herchek and wanted badly to continue the great tradition of Waterloo basketball.

“Those bad years, they're hard on you, they wear on you,” Wise said. “The one thing I can always say about the bad years since I've been the head coach is we always had the hardest-working kids. Even that 1-22 year, those kids never quit, which that's tough to get a group of 14-, 15-, 16-year-old kids to go 1-22 and say, ‘We're just not as skilled as other teams, but we play as hard as anybody we face.’”

Vaughn Dorsey and Kameron Shockley joined the team the following year, Dorsey as a freshman and Shockley coming over from Lake.

Kam’s younger brother, Kyle, also came over from Lake, and Max Adelman and Caleb Francis came over from Field and together they fueled a massive turnaround.

“The revival is when things really started to turn around,” Ryan Wise said. “The turning point was really, I would say, when Max and Caleb Francis came from Field and Shockley came from Lake. That was really what turned it around, and ever since then we really value being known as a basketball school. That's special.”

That 24-win season in 2020 could have been a fluke, a one-time combination of talent in Atwater with Adelman, Dorsey, Francis and Shockley.

This year’s seniors were freshmen then and they refused to let the revival fade away.

Indeed, the following year, Alhassan stepped up to the varsity and the Vikings won another 13 games, including a 10-4 mark in the Mahoning Valley Athletic Conference Scarlet Division.

"That's what Coach has always harped on us [about]," Alhassan said. "Even when I was in middle school and I'd come up and I was a ball boy, he was always about [how] we wanted to change the program and get that losing mentality out and just laying down to teams and, 'Oh, Waterloo is an easy game. We're going to come out here and win.' We wanted to change that."

It's safe to say that the Vikings have changed that.

It's not just the 24 wins in 2019-2020 or the 14 and counting this season.

Consider these words from McDonald coach James Franceschelli:

"I respect Coach Wise and this whole program. Ever since I've been at McDonald, for the last five years, three as a head coach, two as an assistant, these guys have been really, really good and he does a great job. They're skilled. They make the right play every time. It's unbelievable."

This group of seniors makes the right play.

This group of seniors does things the right way.

And thus Wise will soon have to say the hardest of goodbyes, one he began writing on Facebook when January turned to February.

"It's tough to see a group of kids like that leave," Wise said. "It's one of the things that's hard about being a high school basketball coach is you get attached to kids."

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: For Waterloo basketball coach Jason Wise, this senior class hits hard