St. Vincent basketball looking for new identity in summer

The St. Vincent boys' basketball team rode a senior trio to a 16-12 record, an improvement over their 11-13 record in 2022.

The coaching duo of head coach Bruce Valleroy and assistant coach Ryan Prost will now need to find a new identity for the Indians going into next season. Fortunately for them, this is where events such as the Chaffee Varsity Summer Shootout come in, a three-day event where nine area teams play two games consisting of 15-minute halves per day.

"It's awesome," Valleroy said. "We always want to get better and work hard in the offseason. This gives us an opportunity to see what we got, what's going to be our strengths and weaknesses, and just give them a ball in their hand in the offseason and see what we got in these summer events."

Building a program is more than an in-season task. With schools being out for the summer, athletes everywhere are spending their off time working on their skills to come back better for the next year.

"You've got to do something new all season nowadays," Valleroy said. "Everybody's out playing and getting better, and we do the same thing. We want our kids out there and learn, and especially with the we got this year."

Valleroy is using these summer games to get as much playing time out of his players as possible.

"We play everybody," Valleroy said. "We got 10 guys. We bring them all down, we let them all play and get a taste of it. We kind of just run them in and out of different combinations. It's been a great week so far for us, and we get better as we go along with this kind of start now there."

The Indians leaned heavily on the senior trio of Blake Monier, Grant Abernathy, and Simon Unterreiner last season. With them and four more seniors moving on after graduation, the Indians are left with a team mainly comprised of juniors and sophomores.

"We're going to be very young and a little inexperienced varsity-wise because we lost a lot of seniors from last year," Valleroy said. "So we'll probably end up starting two seniors, one junior, and two sophomores with a freshman coming off the bench. So we'll be a little young for the first time in a long time."

Valleroy said Jacob Schremp and Payton Strattman will be taking the lead for the Indians this summer and this upcoming season.

"They're our two seniors and they've played a lot of varsity ball for us last year, and they are going to be our leaders," Valleroy said. "We expect great things out of those guys on and off the court."