By Justin Sokeland
WBIW.com
BEDFORD – The energy level spikes, the heart rate quickens. For everyone involved, the opening day of practice is special. In every other state, it’s just basketball. But this is Indiana, and this is tradition-proud Bedford North Lawrence. Excitement and anxiousness drift aloft and reveal the fearful, like bad cologne and perspiration on a first date.
Jackson Ryan has returned to his first, and true, basketball love. Just five months after being named the new head coach at his alma mater, he stepped into the hot spotlight for his official debut session with his potential team. Unsettled and a little nervous, Ryan began his journey on Monday afternoon. This will be an interesting winter trip.
So many factors have caused some strong headwinds. He got a late start in June, a time reserved for scrimmages and camps, when he was hired near the midpoint of the important off-season month. Now he’s getting a frazzled start to this month, after waiting to see who would report to Day One. Football’s success meant possible delays, and the conversion of players from that sport to basketball will take some time. Welcome home, coach.
“With so many moving pieces, so many unknowns, whether it was looking at last year and what we lost to graduation, so many multi-sport athletes having success in the fall, there was a ton of unknowns,” Ryan said. “We’re starting at ground zero, the first level of everything, and building from there.”
The clock is ticking and the calendar flipping quickly. BNL is scheduled to start the season on Nov. 25, which means – discounting the back-to-back scrimmages next week – the Stars will have only 10 practice sessions before facing an enemy combatant.
There’s much to do, and little time to accomplish all of it.
“The most important thing for us is habits and setting the standard of what this is, what we want this program to be,” Ryan said. “How we show up and compete, how we play. We’re trying to build a strong foundation with everything and take it one step at a time. Walk before we run.”
Ryan and his staff will have holes to fill and decisions to make. The Stars, coming off a 9-13 campaign, lost 82 percent of their scoring and 74 percent of their rebounding, then had to scramble and adjust when former coach Kurt Godlevske stepped down with late notice. Ryan, after one season as the JV coach, assumed command.
“To be honest, that was a baptism by fire,” he said. “When you lose what we did to graduation, there’s a lot of opportunity for guys to fill roles. There was good, but there was also bad. We changed some things, went back to the basics.
”We will have to compete. When teams see us on the schedule, I want them to think they’ll be in a dogfight. We’re not to that level yet, as far as competitiveness, being gritty and hanging our hat on the defensive end. Offensively, we need to buy into ball movement, player movement, working together.”
BNL will stage its annual intrasquad scrimmage on Nov. 17, then visit Austin for the IHSAA sanctioned scrimmage the following night.
