Boys basketball: Sweet 16 loss stings, but doesn’t take away from Fulton’s success

LANARK – For the second straight season, the Fulton Steamers saw their season end in a postseason game at Eastland High School.

Last year, it was a regional semifinal loss to Aquin. On Friday night, it was a sectional final loss to Scales Mound.

Both times, the Steamers felt their season ended too soon. Despite that, the last two seasons have been some of the best basketball in Fulton in quite some time.

Last year’s squad set a single-season record with 29 wins. This year, the Steamers’ 26 wins tied the old record, as they became the fifth team in program history to reach that mark. They also won just their second regional title since 2001, and played in a sectional final for the first time since that 2001 team did.

In fact, the 55 wins are the most ever in a two-season span for Fulton, eclipsing the 52 wins from the back-to-back 26-win seasons in 1999-2000 and 2000-01.

“It’s felt great to be a part of this, especially last season as a sophomore. I was young, but they took me in, and I really enjoyed it,” junior forward Baylen Damhoff said. “We had 29 wins, and there was nothing like it playing for that team; unfortunately the season ended sooner than we thought it would. This year, same thing.

“I had a closer bond with the seniors this year, so we just worked with each other. We’re together all the time, so our bond is amazing when we get on the court together. We just do what we do.”

Damhoff and senior Ethan Price were the 1-2 punch that made the Steamers go. They led Fulton in scoring in just about every game this season, and worked together so well that at times they became an extension of one another on the court.

“The dynamic duo that we kind of had going was a good way for us to be leaders out there,” Price said. “A big part of our success was me and Baylen were big and tall, and we worked hard in the summer. We had a lot of our points, but everybody on this team worked together.

“The team is such a family, and I just really enjoyed being around these guys. They’re so fun. Last year, I loved being around those guys, too. Just being a part of the team is great – winning together, losing together, no matter what, it’s great to be playing with these guys.”

Price and Damhoff were the key cogs returning from last year’s team, which was led by seniors like Brock Mason, Ian Wiebenga, Jacob Jones and Patrick Lower. Price credited that group of leaders with being the main reason why he and Damhoff were able to have some success stepping into that role this season.

“Those guys set a great example,” Price said. “There were a lot of leaders on that team, and I looked up to those guys a lot.”

Fulton coach RJ Coffey, who was a sophomore on the 2001 sectional finalists, said the tone set by senior leaders is the reason why Fulton has had so much success in recent seasons.

“That’s how you keep a program strong, is when you lose good, quality kids – which we’ve done – and you’ve got guys that step up and they don’t miss a beat,” Coffey said. “They just step right into that, whether it’s that leadership role or getting guys in the gym early in the morning. This group again, just like last year, they do all the little things to make a program strong.

“I think they got a taste [last year] of what it could be like being a program that competes at a high level, and they wanted to accomplish more. They weren’t just satisfied with being another good team, they wanted to take the next step. It’s been a long time since we’ve made a run to the Sweet 16, sectional final, and that’s just something that these guys had set in their head as a goal of theirs, and they got here.”

Since Coffey returned and took over as head coach at his alma mater in 2013-14, the Steamers have won 18 or more games seven times, and posted single-digit losses four times – including each of the last three seasons. He’s led Fulton to a pair of regional titles – they also won one in 2020 – and NUIC South titles (with a 23-1 record) in each of their first two seasons in the conference.

He’s quick to deflect credit to his players, and says their work ethic the last couple of seasons has been the biggest key to the Steamers’ success.

Price and Damhoff couldn’t agree more.

“I think a lot of it was just from hard work, even this summer, a few of us coming in and working, then throughout the season me and Baylen getting early morning workouts with Coach Coffey all the time,” Price said. “He really pushed all of us throughout the season, no matter how low we got. It’s just a lot of hard work, coming in mornings and late at night, just getting lots of shots up and practicing, that’s all.”

Not only did it make them better players, Damhoff credited those workouts with helping the Steamers play a more confident brand of basketball. As the physical skills improved, the players’ trust in themselves and each other also grew.

“We get a lot of confidence just being together all the time, pushing each other hard. Coffey pushes us hard, too, and always tells us to be confident and never get down on ourselves. All of that helps with our confidence,” Damhoff said. “We usually just come in all the time in the mornings and get shots up. We just work hard together, and at practice push each other really well and try to make our team the best we can.”

It’s certainly worked the last couple of seasons, and Coffey says the key is every player on the roster putting forth their best effort everyday, from the starters to the guys at the end of the bench.

But that success that has led to hasn’t just been for the players. Coffey pointed to the standing-room-only crowd at Friday night’s sectional semifinal in Lanark as proof of what these teams mean to not only the Fulton program, but also to the school and the town.

“We’ve got a ton of quality guys that have put a lot of time, energy and effort into helping this program grow and get better. Obviously Baylen and Ethan at the top, those guys do so much on both ends, and they’re just phenomenal basketball players. But even our role players and the guys that don’t get as much of the accolades, they’re in practice, they’re grinding, they’re working,” Coffey said. “I push these guys hard – in the summer, in practice – and we try to put a schedule together that would prepare us for making hopefully a run like this, and our guys just kept coming.

“I can’t say enough of what our guys do to not only help our program get better and what they do for their teammates, but really just for our community. The support that we got, those guys earned every bit of that. In the last two years, they’ve accomplished so much, and they’ve earned and deserve everything they’ve got.”