Young Daniel Boone boys’ basketball team ready for the season

With the 2012-13 season arriving quickly, the Daniel Boone High School boys’ basketball team is looking to have a little more success this season than last year. Under new head coach Ian Gendreau (taking the reins from John Butkus), and led by senior Julian Gerhart, the Blazers are looking to make some noise in Section 1 of the Berks League.

“Last season we had a tough stretch toward the end,” Coach Gendreau said, “We finished 10-13 and got into the playoffs via tiebreak with Conrad Weiser. We ended up with the two seed in our division and ended up getting knocked out of the playoffs in the first round by Schuylkill Valley.”

Coming into this season, Gendreau noted that Boone has lost all of its scoring from that team, and the squad he now inherits is very young. He continued, “We’ll have at least three juniors and a sophomore in the starting line-up for our first game, but the positive to that is we have at least four players who have started at least one game last season. We’re athletic, we’re young, and we’re an as fast and quick team as we’ve ever had on the floor at Boone.”

Gendreau said the goal for the team right now is to improve every time they step on the court.

“This is a young, talented team,” he said, “If we focus on becoming a better team and not so much worried about our record, and fine tune all the details, we should be a team to reckon with real quick.”

These goals for the team aren’t too different from last season, and Gendreau is hoping for a better result come the end of the year.

Gendreau is in his first year taking over for longtime Boone basketball coach John Butkus, and he said that sometimes the players love having a new coach, but in certain situations, such as when conditioning comes around and they struggle, it’s not as pleasant.

“I’ve been around the program for a while now, and I’ve coached every one of these kids on the jayvee squad, so while it is new, I’m a familiar face and a familiar yell if need be,” said Gendreau. “All-in-all though, the players seem to be settling in okay to my coaching style.”

For himself, Gendreau said the position of head coach deals with a lot more paperwork than being a jayvee coach. “I have a lot more responsibility now, but I love it, and I love having the ability to put my system in, which is similar to John’s (Coach Butkus), but I’m a little more defensive minded than he was. He was more of an offensive guy. Being the coach is a challenge, and there’s a lot of energy in the gym. Keeping that energy honed and focused will be a big job for me, but I’m definitely looking forward to it.”

Some of the key players on the Blazers this season include Kenny Worthington and Dan Downs. Gendreau noted, “These two were in and out of the lineup last year as sophomores. Dan’s our big guy, and is a nice threat down low. Kenny’s a super athletic, slasher-type player who’s developed a little bit of an outside jumper.”

These two give Boone the experience factor, and Gendreau noted that sophomore Pop Lacey started for the team last season as a freshman. He’ll be a two guard for the team, and Gendreau hopes that Lacey will be an outside threat for the Blazers. Others that Gendreau mentioned include Steve Sievers, Julian Gerhart, Cedric Mann, Xavier Smith and Stephon Williams.

Even though it’s early in the basketball season thus far, Gendreau noted that senior Julian Gerhart has been model leader. The coach noted, “He’s as selfless a player that I’ve had since I’ve been here. He’s a guy who’s the lone senior out of a class of seven or eight juniors who have a lot of physical abilities.”

“While he’s certainly not happy to come off the bench, Julian is a competitor and wants to start and he’s all about what’s good for the team. The rest of the guys are kind of together in that same age bracket and I think we’ll see them step up as the year goes on. However, Julian is the kind of guy I look to right now to be an example to the other players as to what to be.”

The toughest competition that Boone will face this season is probably Reading High. “We haven’t beaten them ever, as far as I know, and we certainly haven’t had any luck with them in the eight years I’ve been here, saidf Gendreau. “Wilson is obviously no joke either. The fact that we now get to play them twice because they’re in our division, certainly beefs up our schedule significantly.”

Gendreau is looking forward to seeing the team come together this season. He noted, “Right now,I think we’re a lot of individual talent. In three months, I want to see how we’ve unified that group into a single functioning unit that can be a threat utilizing all of that speed, athleticism and physical talent.”