From U.P. to D1: Wonders’ skills shine
Iron Mountain star averaging 34.1 points per game this season
The “aha’’ moment for Iron Mountain’s Foster Wonders came just over two years ago in a Class C semifinal game.
The Mountaineers were playing defending champ and heavily favored Detroit Edison and Edison had cut a 10-point deficit in half with just over two minutes left.
Edison’s swarming defense had Iron Mountain reeling until Wonders, only a sophomore, took a pass from Jaden Vicenzi and in one motion in front of the Iron Mountain bench and coach Bucky Johnson, rose up from the right wing and let a 27-footer fly.
“I didn’t even flinch,” Johnson said. “He let it go, and I said it was in.”
That sounds good now, but that isn’t the memory Wonders has of his coach’s reaction.
“I saw a picture of it and coach Johnson was putting his hands up,” Wonders said. “He was looking at me like I was crazy for shooting it. “I just felt it. I’m lucky it went in.”
Luck had nothing to do with it.
That is the moment Wonders, 6 feet 5, was introduced to high school basketball fans in the state. That is what happens when a sophomore scores 28 points in a monumental upset in the Breslin Center.
All Wonders has done since that shot is improve. He enters next week’s state tournament with 2,059 career points, only 119 points from Gage Kreski’s U.P. record of 2,178 points.
This season in 13 games, Wonders is averaging 34.1 points while making 52% of his shots.
Son of Northern Michigan stars
After his semifinal outburst two years ago, we learned Wonder is the son of Julie (Heldt) and Matt Wonders, who were standout players at Northern Michigan and both are in the school’s Hall of Fame.
While his father scored 1,538 points in his four-year career, which is No. 10 in school history, his mother was a Kodak All-America selection, scoring 1,208 points in just two seasons at NMU, where she averaged 25.5 points as a senior, seven times scoring at least 30 points with a career high of 52.
“We’d hear all the stories about how she was even better than my dad and all that kind of stuff,” Wonders said. “That was always fun to hear.”
If you think Wonders modeled his game after his mother, who grew up in the southwestern part of the state and attended Lawrence High School, you‘rewrong.
“I don’t think I could ever match the way my mom played with her energy,” he said. “Just the tenacity that she had. I’ve watched quite a few of her game films. I watch them down my basement. Just how hard she played, it’s crazy.”
Crazy is one adjective you could use, but that might be nicer than she deserves. She doesn’t remember ever attempting a 3-point shot and her outside game was limited to 10-15 feet.
“Otherwise, I was purely mean, like elbows and hips,” she said. “I was so rough, oh my Lord. There was nothing pretty about it; God didn’t gift me anything.”
Rough is another nice way of describing his mother’s play. To be accurate you need to think of the Detroit Pistons’ “Bad Boy” days.
“Oh man, if there was a ‘Bad Girls’ team she’d be on that for sure,” Wonder said. “It didn’t matter who you were, she was always going at someone. She’d knock you over, she’d do anything that she needed to do to beat you.”
Foster’s father, Matt, a former local walk-on, started every game except one in his career at Northern and had an appreciation for 5-10 Julie’s style.
“I don’t know if it was so much dirty as it was more like mean,” he said. “She was tough. Those were the words I used. When I used to watch her play, I was like: ‘Why would I want to play against her?’ Let’s put it that way.
“She was just so tough, she didn’t put up with much.”
Knowing all that begs the question: Why would anyone want to marry someone like that?
“Hoping it would result in kids that were tough,” Matt said, laughing. “That was just her basketball persona. She was much more laid back off the court.”
A knack for big plays
Unlike his mother, Wonders is more of a finesse player. While he isn’t opposed to going inside where he is averaging 7.9 rebounds, he a more or a perimeter player, making almost four 3-point shots a game.
The day after his game-winning shot two years ago, Iron Mountain lost in one of the most controversial endings in tournament history.
Game officials made a series of bad calls and no-calls that snatched the state championship away from the Mountaineers in a game Wonders surpassed the 1,000-point career mark.
Here we are two years later, and Wonders is now a senior and one of the top players in the state, still hoping to win a state championship.
His undefeated junior season was halted by the pandemic before the district final.
Wonders has signed a national letter of intent with Division I Southern Illinois-Carbondale and will go down as one of the best players in U. P. history.
Despite being the only returning starter, the Mountaineers are unbeaten again and ranked No. 3 in Division 3 heading into next week’s district play, thanks largely to somememorable performances from Wonders.
He scored 23 points in the first quarter of a game, by hitting 7 of 7 3-point shots, and finished with 40 points in an 83-44 victory over Ironwood.
“I hit my first threes and I was really feeling good and they kept going in,” Wonders said. “I felt like I was in a really good rhythm.”
His older brother, Carson, a senior who opted out of the season at Northern to apply and interview at medical schools, once hit a schoolrecord 12 three-pointers in a game.
“Foster being Foster, he started passing and didn’t look for his shot after the first quarter,” his mother said. “He’s a basketball player. Breaking records, those sorts of things don’t even cross his mind.”
In the Mountaineers’ closest game this season, a 58-52 victory over Escanaba, Wonders put the game away by scoring on a reverse layup and then hitting consecutive 3-point shots to finish with 27 points.
He entered that game with 1,999 career points. His first shot of the game came after hesitating at the top of the key, taking a dribble to his right and then draining a three.
‘His happy place’
Wonders literally grew up in a gym. He watched his dad play in men’s leagues and attended Carson’s games. His father is also a gym teacher.
“So it was 24/7 gym access and that just happened to be where we spent our time,” his mother said. “I mean, we’re in Iron Mountain, there’s not a ton of stuff to do so we just went to the gym. That’s always been our family thing — hang out in the gym. Foster just took to it.
“He calls the gym his happy place.”
His father and his brother were his early one-on-one opponents and for the longest time, the games weren’t close.
It took until the eighth grade for Wonders to beat them both and games that followed weren’t close once he finally beat them.
“I really started improving — noticing it a lot — in the eighth grade,” he said. “I think in both of those games I beat my brother and my dad I might have missed a shot or two in both of them combined.
“When I did it I was running around the gym going crazy. It’s something I’ll always remember.”
There was never a one-on-one game against mom. Their competition came in games of “PIG.”
“When I was young she usually beat me most of the time and she wouldn’t take it easy on me, and I’m glad she did that,” Wonders said. “There was a time when I started beating her more and more and that felt pretty good.”
He grew up along side coach Johnson’s son, Marcus, who graduated last year. They were the basketball team’s managers for several seasons.
“He and Marcus used to be out there warming up with the team and not managing,” Johnson said. “They wanted to warm-up. Seriously, it was hilarious. They’d sit on the bench for the games and jump around. They were into it.
“I’d have to tell them to get the players some water.”
Those days helped pave the way for Wonders’
career. It was apparent to fans that they were in for something special when those two reached high school.
“Coach would be in the locker room at halftime giving his speech and Marcus and I would be shooting around,” he said. “Then they’d come back out and we’d be begging him to let us stay out there and shoot.”
Johnson was also his Little League baseball coach when Wonders, then 9 years old, starred as a sluggerand talented pitcher. By the time he was approaching middle school,Johnson knew he was a special basketball talent, too. Nothing has changed since then.
“He can score at all levels,” Johnson said. “He definitely increased his range on his shot this year. He’s stronger around the basket and finishing. Guys are draped on him. His pull-up game is pretty nice because he rises up over these smaller guards and he shoots right over him.”
From ‘above the bridge’ to Division I
Wonders’ first scholarship offer came after his eighth-grade year and it came from Northern Michigan.
The Wonders weren’t sure if a Division I offer would be possible given their location.
But Jason Whitens, who led Powers North Central to three consecutive Class D state championships, signed with Western Michigan, proving there are basketball prospects “above the bridge.”
“It definitely gave me hope,” Wonders said. “I’d always thought being from the U.P. would make it harder to get noticed at that level. But he raised my hopes a little bit. He set that foundation for me.”
Wonders received his first Division I offer from Central Michigan after assistant coach Jeff Smith, now at Oakland University, invited him to a camp following his freshman season.
No one is sure what would have happened had Wonders been allowed to have a normal AAU season last spring and summer. He likely would have received offers from bigger D-I schools other than Southern Illinois.
“I think I would have had chances because I feel that I improved a lot,” he said. “But this is a good spot for me. The coaching staff was really on me harder than pretty much every school. I knew quite a few of the players already.”
All of Wonders’ attention now is directed at the state tournament. He still thinks about the championship game from two years ago and it provides motivation to change the outcome, even if he is Iron Mountain’s only player with tournament experience.
“I’m really excited,” he said. “I’m hoping everything goes smooth as far as COVID goes and just keeping our fingers crossed through that. It’s stressful for sure.
“But I think we’ve got a good chance.” Whatever happens over the next three weeks, his mother knows there won’t be a moment too big for her son.
He had prepared himself to make that dagger shot in the semifinals two years ago and he is prepared for one more run at a state championship.
“There’s a lot of pressure he puts on himself,” she said. “But the more time you spend preparing yourself, the less nerves you feel.
“Nerves are for the unprepared — that’s been our motto.”
Mick McCabe is a former longtime columnist for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at mick.mccabe11@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1. Save $10 on his new book, “Mick McCabe’s Golden Yearbook: 50 Great Years of Michigan’s Best High School Players, Teams & Memories,” by ordering right now at McCabe.PictorialBook.com.
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