By John Ring
Published November 10, 2022 in The Burg
Chad Thompson may be young and only starting his second season as the mentor for the Streaks but he’s flexible as well.
He graduated a lot of players from his first Silver Streak team-- which will always be close to his heart-- and in the process, he lost a lot of experience and height in the process.
That being said, he’s gearing up for the wars of the Western Big 6 and the upcoming 2022-2023 basketball season for his team.
“This is going to be a very new Silver Streaks team,” said Coach Thompson. “We’re going to return basically just three players who have had varsity experience and that’s going to be about it.”
“We’re going to lean heavily on the junior class because those guys are going to have to both produce and develop at the same time. But we’re very impressed with our incoming freshmen and sophomore groups. We had a great Fall with them in the weight room. The ‘buy in’ is there with that group and it’s going to be a team that gets up and down the floor. It’s going to be a track meet.”
“They have speed and they are athletes. Our coaches at that level are impressed with them and how they have bought into becoming a Silver Streak basketball player.”
You can call it a rebuilding year or a transition year but it is what it is. These Streaks are going to be Born to Run.
And when you don’t have a lot of height and little experience, that’s what you need. Speed. Play at a fast level. Confuse the other team. Make them uncomfortable. Is it going to be easy? Nope.
But at the high school level, you have to change from time to time. And there sure aren’t any 6’7” hill toppers on the Silver Streaks roster, last I looked.
And I hate to bring up the Western Big 6-- but how can you avoid it?
How can the Big 6 get tougher? Geneseo’s best player recently transferred to East Moline.
Moline got a transfer as well-- this one is 6’11” (Owen Freeman) and will be going to Iowa next season. Rock Island got a transfer from Davenport North.
Coach Thompson also talked about some changes on his coaching staff for the upcoming
season. Mark Harden Junior will be the freshmen coach. Mark Harden replaces Garrett Rau as the sophomore coach. “That change was football motivated as Garrett went to coach at ROWVA for football,” said Thompson.
Steve Hawkins returns as an assistant as does Eric Thompson and Thompson said there are two new volunteer coaches; B.J. Dietrich, a former Silver Streak and Brady Lander.