Matt Trowbridge
Rockford Register Star
Published 4:48 a.m. CT March 13, 2023
CHAMPAIGN — Benjamin Vandigo, Ben Werner, Sam Cogane, Zayden Ellsworth and Collin Fosler changed Scales Mound basketball.
Thomas Hereau, Jacob Duerr and Charlie Wiegel lead a cast that may have made that change permanent.
A year after the sixth-smallest basketball playing public school in the state took third in Class 1A, Scales Mound finished second with an entirely new starting lineup, seamlessly replacing five starters who had been key players for all four years. That shouldn’t have been possible.
“It’s amazing,” said Vandigo, an All-State guard who returned to watch his former understudies at state. “Being able to do it in back-to-back years with completely different teams: It’s a fever dream.”
Breakthrough sports stories can disappear as fast as they arrive. Indiana State has won one NCAA Tournament game in 43 years since reaching the title game with Larry Bird and Carl Nicks in 1979. South Beloit has never even returned to the playoffs after winning a Class 1A state title in 2003.
But others use one astonishing season as a springboard to many more. Lena-Winslow, which won its first Class 1A state football title in 2010, now has six. Dakota also won two more state titles after winning its first behind a class of seniors led by local legend Matt Wenger. Pecatonica, after years of losing in football and boys basketball, has continued to win after its great 2022 senior class graduated.
By reaching the state title game and erasing a 19-5 first quarter deficit to the lead four times in the third quarter, Scales Mound made a statement they're here to stay.
“Yeah, I think this is something we could do," said Erik Kudronowicz, who is in his 17th year as Scales Mound’s coach.
“Is it always going to be the state tournament? No. But are we going to make postseason runs, are we going to be successful teams, are we going to be one of those tough outs in the postseason? Yeah. I think so.”
Especially next year. The Hornets will return five of their top eight players, including second-team All-State guard Thomas Hereau, who scored 24 points in the second and third quarters of Saturday’s 65-45 loss to Waterloo Gibault.
“He was unbelievable,” Gibault coach Dennis Rueter said.
“I didn’t want to go away,” Hereau said. “No one wanted to.”
They didn’t go away. They won’t go away.
“People love to talk about the last two years, but I am excited about what the next few years will bring,” senior point guard Charlie Wiegel said. “Scales Mound isn’t done being good yet. We have a lot of kids willing to put in the work, especially after watching these two teams go to state. I am excited to cheer them on and join the community that has given so much to me.”
Most of last year’s seniors, which constituted what Kudronowicz called “the team of a lifetime,” returned to Champaign to watch their former understudies go even further than they went.
“It’s amazing,” said Ben Werner, last year’s center who now is an NCAA Division II defensive end at Upper Iowa. “We knew these guys were good too, but we didn’t think they would be this good. Being this good and having your name out in the whole state will keep kids wanting to play. This is something to build off of.”
It won’t be easy. The first time Kudronowicz won a regional title, he had to wait a decade to win another one. And slog through consecutive 1-26 and 1-27 seasons. That can happen in a school with only 68 students.
“There just weren’t boys in the school then,” Kudronowicz said.
But there are boys now. And those boys are tied to this team. Wiegel and fellow senior guard Jacob Duerr have coached the sixth-grade team the last two years.
“The little kids are in the gym,” Duerr said. "The big kids are in the gym. We are working together. It’s a special connection that we have to make them better players.”
“I want there to be a team that surpasses us," Wiegel said. "I want every record that we broke to be broken later.”
Scales Mound plays in a conference known by every small school in the state. Mostly renowned for football, but in several other sports as well. Not boys basketball. Not yet. But the Hornets are looking to change that.
“Representing the NUIC, that’s very important to all of us up here,” Kudronowicz said. “We want to continue to be that conference of champions. We want to take boys basketball to the place that football is, where girls basketball is, where volleyball is at, amongst other sports.”
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.
