Popejoy scores 15, makes clinching FTs as Winamac’s Stesiak earns 300th win at Rochester

Hunter leads Lady Zs with 11, J. Field grabs 14 rebounds

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Sadie Popejoy Lyla Bowers

Like Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens, Tony Stesiak is a 300-game winner, and he would appear to have retained his best fastball.

Sadie Popejoy scored 15 points, including two crucial free throws with 15.3 seconds left, to lead the Winamac girls basketball team to a 45-41 win over Rochester at the RHS gym Tuesday.

The win was the 300th in the coaching career for Stesiak. Coincidentally, the first 258 of those wins came at Rochester, whom he coached from 2000-17. After a five-year run as a boys basketball assistant coach at Rochester, he returned to being a head coach with the Winamac girls in 2022.

Stesiak is one of 25 active coaches to get to 300. (Clinton Central’s Don Helmick also won his 300th game Tuesday with a 48-39 win over Clinton Prairie.)

As if winning the game at Rochester did not already evoke nostalgia, he did it with two of his former Rochester players, Keaton Stesiak and Ali (Larkin) Kiser, as assistant coaches. His other assistant is Jake Ruff, husband of former Rochester player Jenna (Easterday) Ruff.

Stesiak’s staff presented him with a plaque and a poster, and the team took a photo with Stesiak at center court afterwards.

Stesiak thanked former Rochester assistants Randy Wynn, Bethany (Sewell) Anderson, Jason Snyder, Katie Felke, Stacy Stesiak and Joel Lowe.

This game was originally scheduled for Nov. 29, but it was postponed due to snow. Stesiak appreciated the coincidence of it all.

“When people wish me a happy birthday, what do I say? I’m one day older than I was yesterday,” a philosophical Stesiak said afterwards. “But if you want to indulge… there’s just a lot of people. A couple things: I’ve been around a long time, and I don’t have enough other hobbies. Because I’ve lost a boatload of games too, and I probably remember those a lot more than wins, but as I told the girls in the locker room, the Lord works in mysterious ways. It takes a snow day and a couple losses to end up here. Come on.”

Kandace Kroft added 13 points, and Marissa Iverson had a double-double with 11 points and 12 rebounds for Winamac.

Brailyn Hunter was Rochester’s only double figure scorer with 11 points. Jadyn Field had five points and 14 rebounds. Rochester had a 19-11 advantage in made free throws and an 11-2 edge in bench points, but they never led after the first quarter.

Winamac improved to 10-3. Rochester dropped to 6-6.

“It was a game we thought we could get,” Burrus said. “If you look at the second quarter … six points, and we got a lot of high-percentage looks. We missed some 3s, but I thought we got the ball where we needed to get it. … We hate to lose. We knew that Winamac’s a good team, but we felt like we could get it.”

Winamac had one field goal in the fourth quarter, and it came on a driving banker from Kroft with 6:09 left to push the lead back to 40-34.

Then neither team scored for over three-and-a-half minutes before Jadyn Field kicked back out to Lyla Bowers for a 3-pointer with 2:32 left that cut the lead to three.

Corinne Ulerick split a pair of free throws with 2:11 left. Iverson also went one for two with 1:44 left after drawing Field’s fifth foul.

But Hunter got a favorable roll on a pullup 10-footer to trim the lead to 42-39.

A Maggie Keller free throw with 32.0 seconds left for Winamac made it a two-possession game, but Hope Baugh, only playing after both Field and sister Ali had also fouled out, hit a 13-footer off an Aubrey Wilson assist.

The lead was down to 43-41, and Burrus used his final timeout with 19.5 seconds left.

After the timeout, Rochester pressed, but the ball got worked up the sideline to Popejoy. Wilson fouled her.

Popejoy said she wanted to shoot the free throws.

“I always want to shoot free throws,” Popejoy said. “There was no pressure on us. Obviously, I knocked them down with all the noise going on. I’ve worked on them since the beginning of the season when I was under 50%.”

Popejoy was asked about the impact of Stesiak in her playing career.

“For me, it’s like a special feeling,” Popejoy said. “He pushes us to be better every day. He only wants the best for us. He’s always there for us, cheering us on. I’ll always be grateful for that. Getting this win against (Rochester) is even bigger for us and him especially.”

The game got off to a feisty start. Popejoy hit a 23-footer and later added a pullup right baseline jumper, but Rochester matched her with a Hunter 3-pointer and a Jadyn Field screen-and-roll layup.

But that would be the Lady Zs’ last field goal for over 11 minutes.

When Popejoy was called for a technical foul with 4:19 left in the quarter for objecting to a personal foul called against her, Wilson sank two free throws to give Rochester a 7-5 lead, but Kroft hit a 3 to give Winamac the lead.

Bowers would hit two of four free throws in the final 19 seconds of the quarter, but Kroft made two from the line with 1.3 seconds left in the quarter, and that triggered a 14-2 run. Popejoy and Iverson combined for the first 10 Winamac points of the second quarter, and Kroft showed off her speed with a coast to coast layup to make it 22-11.

A Hunter 3 finally broke the run.

“We couldn’t finish around the rim, and when you’re getting those opportunities, the hard part is getting there,” Burrus said. “The finish is the reward, and we just couldn’t put it in the basket. It’s so frustrating. … We were aggressive to the rim too.”

Winamac led 24-15 at halftime and restored an 11-point lead on a Kroft second-chance 3-pointer five minutes into the half. But Rochester made 12 of 15 free throws in the quarter, and when Hunter drained another 3 with 6:39 left in the game, the lead was down to four.

Rochester also won the two-quarter JV game 12-2 behind Baugh’s seven points.

Winamac 45, Rochester 41

WINAMAC (45) (10-3)

Kandace Kroft 4 3-4 13, Sadie Popejoy 5 3-3 15, Maggie Keller 1 1-2 3, Corinne Ulerick 0 1-2 1, Marissa Iverson 4 3-10 11, Abby Keller 0 0-0 0, Kylie Fisher 0 0-0 0, Jordan Compton 1 0-0 2

TEAM: 15 11-21 45

ROCHESTER (41) (6-6)

Aubrey Wilson 0 7-8 7, Brailyn Hunter 4 0-0 11, Adalyn Gonzalez 2 3-5 7, Jadyn Field 1 3-4 5, Ali Field 0 0-0 0, Lyla Bowers 1 6-8 9, Hope Baugh 1 0-0 2

TEAM: 9 19-25 41

Three-point field goals:

Winamac 4 (Popejoy 2, Kroft 2),

Rochester 4 (Hunter 3, Bowers)

Total fouls: Winamac 19, Rochester 20

Technical foul: Popejoy (WIN), 4:19, first

Fouled out: J. Field (RHS), 1:44, fourth; A. Field (RHS), :47.3, fourth

Turnovers: Winamac 16, Rochester 21

Score by quarters

Winamac 10 14 14 7 – 45

Rochester 9 6 16 10 – 41

JV: Rochester 12, Winamac 2