Matt Trowbridge
Rockford Register Star
Published 7:31 a.m. CT March 7, 2023 Updated 7:32 a.m. CT March 7, 2023
Scales Mound’s first-ever run to the state tournament was four years in the making. Five senior starters had all been mainstays since they were freshman.
COVID wiped out their junior year. That put extra pressure on their senior season. Not just on them. On everyone around them.
“As talented as they were, most people would say that is a once in a lifetime team,” coach Erik Kudronowicz said. “As their coach, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass us by."
So he forced his current team to push them at every turn.
“These guys had to prep them," Kudronowicz said. "We had to be ready for everything. Because if we got beat and we got knocked out, I don’t know if I could have slept knowing we did not prepare them as well as we could have.”
That third-place team at state was the first sectional champion in 79 years of Scales Mound basketball. That starting five scored more than 5,000 combined points. Before them, Scales Mound had won 20 games only twice in 67 years. Scales Mound did everything it could to get the most out of that once in a lifetime team.
And in doing so created another team just like it.
No, these players won’t score more than 5,000 points. They had to wait in the wings too long. But being sparring partners for the greatest team in school history — and one of the greatest in the history of the entire NUIC conference — helped the Scales Mound understudies become state qualifiers themselves.
One of the smallest schools in the state, a team with no returning starters, with no players who averaged more than 3.6 points last year, qualified for Thursday’s Class 1A state semifinals by beating Chicago Marshall in the super sectional for the second straight year, 60-56 Monday at NIU.
One of the reasons last year’s team was 36-3, Kudronowicz said, was because their practices were harder than most of their games.
“That’s kudos to everybody that’s been involved in this,” he said. “And now you are seeing the byproduct with the No. 2s now that they are the No. 1s.”
These two great teams are really three great groups. Last year’s seniors. Current seniors Charlie Wiegel, Jacob Duerr and backup center Dylan Stavenburg. And five juniors who get significant playing time on a team that is now 32-5: Thomas Hereau, Evan Cogan, Max Wienan, Jonah Driscoll and Seth Birkett.
“I’ve always played with these guys and ours, and played up with the group from last year,” said Hereau, a 6-2 junior who had 23 points and six rebounds Monday. “I’ve always been up there with them, pushing them to be better. And they pushed us to be better. It definitely paid off this year with how far we’ve come.”
“The last few years,” point guard Charlie Wiegel said, “those seniors (last year) had always put in the work, but we were right behind them, always putting in the work.”
Basketball has always loomed large in Scales Mound.
“Even when we were winning just one game, our gyms were still full,” said Duerr, who scored 15 points Monday. “Our community is always going to be there for us.”
The Southside Hornet Pub & Grille — owned by Wiegel’s family — has old newspaper clippings of the Hornets on the walls. Even though there wasn’t that much to celebrate about Scales Mound basketball until recently. And, for some reason, there are no clippings up of any of the recent great teams.
“They are coming,” Wiegel said.
That restaurant has been packed with many Scales Mound reunions.
“Everybody from Scales Mound,” Wiegel said, “is always going to come back. The only reason they don’t come back is if they are dead or live far away.”
Now, there is more reason that ever to gather and celebrate for Scales Mound. A town of 436 people had far more than 450 fans for Monday's victory at NIU. And the team that pushed what was supposed to be the greatest team in Scales Mound history, now might be the team that turns this tiny school — the sixth smallest of 403 basketball-playing schools in Illinois — into a yearly power.
“We weren’t always the team that won,” Hereau said. “Now that we are, it just pushes everyone next to keep going.”
“This is something we have been building for awhile,” said Kudronowicz, who went 1-26 and 1-27 as late as his 11th and 12th seasons as coach. “This is my 17th season. When I took over 17 years ago, the program was not what you see today. The youth stuff we instilled. The basketball playing they do now. Youth teams building up to our middle school teams building up to our high school teams. The former players of mine now in place to help.
“I just sit back sometimes. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.”
Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.
