For Clay’s seniors, this was supposed to be the year

Clay’s seniors have been playing basketball together since they were in the third grade.

They are a tight-knit group who want to win, but they play in one of the toughest leagues in Northwest Ohio — the Three Rivers Athletic Conference. Now, they are 2-7 and winless in three TRAC games.

 This group includes Keeghan Calkins, Zach Woollard, Scotty Woollard, Ethan Spears, Noah Hagdohl, Logan Heintschel, Jakob Morris and Frank Waganfeald. 

Waganfeald is a 6-foot-9 forward who averages 11 points and seven rebounds and Hagdohl is a 6-4 guard averaging 17 points and 6.5 rebounds, and they scored 31 points in a 54-44 loss to Southview at Rossford’s Martin Luther King Showcase. That’s typically how it goes, with those two averaging over 50 percent of the team’s points.

Clay coach David Rodriguez believes his team needs to let those two do their thing, but the rest need to relax and hit shots when the opportunity arises. Against Southview, after Waganfeald put up most of his points in the first quarter, the Cougars collapsed on him the remainder of the game, sometimes triple teaming him, so the guards had their opportunity to hit shots.

“We have two of the best big guys in the area that are doing their job pretty much. Frank had knee surgery in the offseason, so he is still working himself into shape,” Rodriguez said.

“To be honest with my team, sometimes he gets going, and for some reason we want to go away from him. We want to do something else. Frank and Noah make everything easy for everybody else. They just need to realize that. When they realize that, shots will start falling. That is what I tell my guards, ‘Let them get all the attention they want.’”

Despite Waganfeald coming off knee surgery, Rodriguez says he and Hagdohl are playing their best basketball ever.

“I think Noah is starting to realize that he is the man on the team, he is our best player, and he is finding himself on how to lead and he is super competitive,” Rodriguez said. “So, he is still finding his way to lead, so for him leading is just doing it. Sometimes you have got to find a way to lead other people because not everybody is on that same wavelength that you are as a competitor,” Rodriguez said.

“I think Frank is still getting into shape. I challenge him every game about his stamina, about getting up and down the floor, and I think this is the first time in three years that he has no pain in his knee. He is working himself into game shape and every game has been better for him. And, I’m not going to try and hide him, because he is probably going to go play (NCAA) Division II basketball next year, so they are not going to hide you in college, so you have to figure it out.”

College prospects

Rodriguez says Hagdohl is getting “a ton” of NCAA D-III looks, but believes the Clay guard could play D-II. Waganfeald has D-II schools interested, and “a lot of D-IIIs.”

“At the end of the day, I told them, ‘You need to use basketball for college, not college for basketball’ because how much success do you want to have when you graduate from college? Noah is a close to a 4.0 and Frank is about 3.6, 3.7, and they are great kids when it comes to grades,” Rodriguez said.

So how do Waganfeald and Hagdohl feel about their team’s inability to get wins, despite playing out close games over the past two seasons, but somehow falling on the short end most of the time? 

“Personally, I think we just need to put together a full game,” Hagdohl said. “It always seems like we’re missing one quarter or a couple possessions that lead to us losing in tight games. We have the potential, we have all the talent that we need to win, but once when we can get it all together, we are going to be a whole different ball team.

“For this year, I just want to finish with a winning season — a season over .500 — that would be ideal. We are at a setback where we are now, but when we are chasing adversity we have to overcome it, and I believe this is a group of guys that can overcome adversity,” Hagdohl continued.

Hagdohl and Waganfeald will tell you how long they have awaited this senior season, hoping to bring to Clay High a team that could be contenders in a big way.

“We’ve been playing together for a long time,” Waganfeald said. “We’ve grown up with each other, we’re all best friends, and not only do we bond inside basketball but in the classroom and outside. We’re all good kids who stay out of trouble. We just do what we do, and we just need to stay focused.”

Hagdohl added, “My teammates — they are family. We have grown up around each other and we’ve been playing together since third grade. They are my brothers. I’d die for them and do what I can for them. It is especially nice to play with other ‘family’ members. I would not trade it for anything. It is the best group of guys that I know.”

Waganfeald admits that recovering from surgery has hampered him, but he’s working on it.

“Well, this season unfortunately I had a pretty serious knee injury that I had to get treated, so my offseason was not good. I did not play too much AAU basketball and I was not in the gym as much as I could be, and along with COVID, it was hard to get into the gym in the first place,” Waganfeald said. 

“When I got healthy, I just went anywhere I could. I mean, I was outside at my grandma’s house, the local Y, anywhere I could get in I was there just working on getting my stroke back, shooting a lot of hook shots left and right-handed just to keep everything flowing, so I don’t lose my touch,” Waganfeald continued.

“I tried to shoot a lot of jump shots and just get the basics down just so I could get back into it. Now that we are back in practice, I like to get on the gun, shoot as much as I can and try to get as much as 500 shots a day. That does not always happen but that is the goal.”

In addition, the two college prospects firmly believe that Rodriguez is the coach who has gotten them this far and the man who can get this team into a winning culture before the season ends.

“Ever since our freshman year has been over, he has just been a turnaround for our culture almost,” Waganfeald said. “He really promotes winning more than any other coach we have had. You know, we have not been winning but we have that mindset to win rather than going into a game knowing that we are going to lose. We can compete with all the teams that we play, and we know that we can win, we just have not found exactly how to yet.”

Hagdohl added, “’Coach Rod’ has been a positive impact on all of our lives. On and off the court he is always there for us, and regardless he’s always going to give you how he sees things and he is always going to be real with you no matter what. I think that’s one thing that we all need. 

“He has really stepped up to be an impact on our lives — a lot of positives. All of us have our ups and downs with him, but at the end of the day it’s all love and I know he looks at it like we’re his kids and he respects us like he’s our father.”