Turnaround has Steel Valley on a roll
After a heartbreaking 5958 defeat at Deer Lakes on Jan. 8, the Steel Valley boys basketball team sat at 5-7 overall and just 1-3 in Class 3A Section 3. Back-to-back seasons without making the playoffs seemed to be all but guaranteed.
The next day at practice, senior forward Connor Vehec gathered the team at center-court for a playersonly meeting.
“Me and the assistants were in the back figuring out who’s playing who and what we need to do, and the team was on the court stretching, or so I thought,” Steel Valley coach Dale Chapman said. “And we came out of the office and walked down the hall, and they’re all standing around instead of stretching, and the trainer said, ‘I think Connor’s holding a meeting.’”
Chapman said he had no knowledge of what was said during the meeting, but whatever Vehec told the rest of the players clearly had the intended effect. The Ironmen (14-7, 9-3) haven’t lost since, riding a nine-game winning streak into the WPIAL playoffs this weekend.
They’ve picked up plenty of big wins along the way during the streak, but the last game they lost might have been the key to the team’s success in the second half of the season.
Steel Valley fell into a big hole early in the game at Deer Lakes, trailing 19-4 after the first quarter. But the Ironmen slowly clawed their way back, and eventually found themselves holding a one-point lead late in the game. Then, with the score
tied, the Lancers made the first of two free throws with six seconds left, then missed the second. After a scramble for the ball, Steel Valley forward Todd Hill picked it up and fired a desperation heave at the basket, but to no avail.
“I just went in the locker room and I told the kids, ‘OK, we’ve just got to run the table,’” Chapman said.
Mission accomplished. “You want to stay in contact with somebody who is two games up on you, so we really wanted to win that game that night,” Chapman said. “We really did. But was it a turning point in our season? I believe it was.”
Four weeks later on Feb. 4, the Ironmen got their chance for revenge. Already riding a six-game winning streak, Steel Valley made it seven in a row with a 62-50 home win against Deer Lakes to split the season series.
“That game was circled when we got off the bus,” Chapman said. “Deer Lakes is a tough opponent, they’re a tough out … We thought we had them up there, and we just wanted to prove that we could get them.”
Junior point guard Camden Polak has received most of the attention during Steel Valley’s streak, and for good reason. Polak set a singlegame school record with 48 points in the Ironmen’s 90-80 triple-overtime win against South Allegheny Jan. 25. Less than two weeks later, Polak surpassed the 1,000-point mark for his career in a 5440 win at Burrell.
Although Polak is the team’s go-to scorer with an average of 22.5 points per game, he isn’t doing it alone.
Senior guard Kameron Williams got a late start with the basketball season after finishing up with football, but he’s averaging 14.9 points per game while playing some of the best defense Chapman said he has ever seen. Senior forward Andre HoyeCogdell averages 9.4 points and five assists per game, and Vehec, the team’s defacto leader, averages a double-double at 10.9 points and 10 rebounds per game.
Despite all their success in the last month of the season, Chapman constantly reminds the team of where it once stood and how quickly things can change if they don’t play every game like it’s their last.
“They’re brought down to earth probably about every half hour,” Chapman said. “We’re capable of winning any game, and we’re capable of losing any game. And I keep telling them that every single day.”