Boys basketball: Freshmen making impact at Keystone, Amherst

Keystone coach Jeff Holzhauer wasn't surprised by the play of freshman Colt Cowling, Amherst frosh Jack Coleman either. Holzhauer is a basketball junkie. When he's not coaching the Wildcats, he spent his time coaching elementary kids. Cowling and Holzhauer's son Ty have been under his leadership since the third grade. So has Coleman. "I put together an AAU team when my son was in third grade," Holzhauer said. "Jack's one of my guys. I heard the Amherst kid was pretty good and I knew his parents a little bit. Ty had played some basketball skill stuff over at Splash Zone with Colt. They actually did swim lessons as a baby. That's when I first met Colt's mom. "I just kind of randomly put together a team. There was a kid from Avon who played for Holy Trinity and goes to Ignatius now. We kind of got lucky. I had no idea if we'd be good or not. We actually got kicked out of our first tournament. They put us in a younger division because they didn't know anything about us. We were beating teams 80-2, 80-5, so they asked us not to come back." Holzhauer knew he had something special. "The Coleman kid was really good," said Holzhauer. "The Cowling kid was pretty good. My son was pretty skilled at that age and we had some really big kids from Keystone, too. It was a lot of fun and it's been fun for years." When Cowling started his freshman year at Keystone, the kids already knew how good he was. Holzhauer already had Liam Goran back from his outstanding freshman season last year. "He averaged 17 (points) a game," Holzhauer said of Goran. "It was our one-two punch, with (Grant) Hartley and Goran. Now, they've just kind of switched. Liam's kind of taken Grant's role and Colt's kind of taken Liam's role. We've lucked out, having back-to-back years with Liam and Colt." Over the years, Keystone has had a number of quality freshmen who have impacted the varsity team. The Conrad brothers (Austin and C.J.) and the Kuhl brothers (Brandon and Brody) all played for Keystone. C.J. Conrad played football at Kentucky and is tight ends coach with Kent State. Austin Conrad played football at Ohio. "The one thing that separates those kids, they were pretty mature mentally and emotionally, but physically as well," Holzhauer said. "You want to talk about (Brett) Bartlett and even D.J. Shaw, those two were just highly-skilled players. They were not developed (physically) as freshmen. They were just highly skilled." Bartlett was a basketball coach up to last year at Big Walnut. Shaw was a successful football coach at Midview and is the principal at Westlake. Cowling and Coleman play like they've been there before. Both look comfortable on the floor. Cowling is second on the team in points (251) and rebounds (88) and third in assists (38) and steals (40). He's averaging nearly 18 points a game and has proven to be a reliable shooter. He's hit 103 of his 217 attempts from the floor (47 percent) and 37 of his 49 free throw attempts (76 percent). Goran leads Keystone with 291 points and leads in assists and steals with 55 and 51. He's fourth in rebounding (64). Coleman has been very efficient for the Comets as their sixth man. He's shooting nearly 50 percent from the floor. He's made 72 of 149 attempts (48.3 percent) and he's hit 15 of his 33 3-point attempts. At the foul line, Coleman is 49-of-62 (79 percent). He has 82 rebounds (30 offensive), 31 assists and 17 steals. He's scored 208 points, averaging nearly 15 points a game. "I've never had (a freshman) come into my program like this," said Amherst coach Pat Bray. "Back in our day, we had the parks and everything to play. Nowadays, they have AAU, where in the offseason, they play a lot of basketball. It's a credit to him. When you put that much time and effort, the game's become easy. "When he needs to make a big shot or when he needs to step up and make that play, it's like, 'I've done it 100 times in practice. It's nothing different.' He's in the top three in every statistical category for my team." Freshmen have impacted the local basketball scene for years. Bill Szabo made his presence felt at Firelands in the late 1970s. Szabo is still the career scoring leader in Lorain County with 2,567 points. "He was beyond his years, skill-wise, and even more confidence-wise," said his coach Keith Sooy. "I first saw him making shots from halfcourt in middle school. I knew he was going to be special." Szabo was All-Inland Conference his freshman year (1976-77), scoring 523 points (23.8 average). The Falcons were conference champions and advanced all the way to the Class AA district championship, where they lost to Brookside, 52-41. Ironically, Szabo grew up in the Brookside School district but moved to the Firelands district in the sixth grade. When Szabo was a 14-year old freshman, Firelands opened the season at Amherst on Nov. 27. He wouldn't turn 15 until January and didn't know until the morning of the game he would be starting. "I'm in class and all of a sudden over the announcements 'Bill Szabo report to Coach Sooy's office'", said Szabo. "I thought I was in trouble. He said, 'Are you ready to start tonight?' I hadn't been in the starting lineup through any of the practices. We talked a little bit and he sent me back to class, 'Be ready to play.' "We played Amherst at Amherst, packed house. I ended up with 21 points and 13 rebounds. I fouled out with about six minutes to go in the game. I cried. I wanted to play. We got beat (71-65) in overtime." That was just the beginning. Szabo poured in 36 points the next game against South Amherst on his way to a record-setting career. Contact Tim Gebhardt at 329-7135 or timothygeb@msn.com.