Thursday, March 11, 1999
No. 1 basketball team gives Mason new identity
BY SCOTT MacGREGOR
The Cincinnati Enquirer
![[mason fans]](/editions/1999/03/11/masonfans_150x183.jpg)
Ginny Sundin, right, cheers Mason's girls basketball team with husband Bob, left, and Fred Stemmler, behind her.
(Craig Ruttle photo)
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MASON — There used to be towns like this: little villages on the fringes of big cities, old men and stay-at-home mothers and rebellious teen-agers rallying for one cause, the fortunes of the local basketball team at the tip of everyone's tongue.
There are plenty of towns like this: strip malls and housing developments and amusement parks where once there blew tall blades of wheat and wild grass, the quaintness sucked out by the powerful sprawl of suburbia.
And then there is Mason, Ohio. It is a town like this and a town like that, more modern now than nostalgic. But as Mason — a suburb of 17,500 north of Cincinnati in Warren County — grapples with rapid expansion and the sameness of suburbia, a group of talented young women and generous old folk is unwittingly helping the city keep its small-town feel.
The girls basketball team at Mason High School, ranked No. 1 in the country by USA Today, is three wins from a mythical national championship.
The Comets will be crowned national champions if they win the Ohio Division I state championship, though a tough test looms Saturday in the regional final against Beavercreek or Mount Notre Dame. Mason won big in Wednesday's regional semifinals, blowing out Trotwood Madison 53-37 to run its record to 24-0.
The team is drawing fans in astounding numbers, packing gyms wherever it goes with green-and-white clad fanatics — thanks much to the Mason Seniors Pep Club, a collection of senior citizens that has adopted the girls as their own.
Following the seniors' lead are other townsfolk, young and old and middle-age, realizing that this confluence of talent and spirit is truly something special.
“The whole town has gone gung-ho,” said Fred Stemmler, 69, a lifelong Mason resident who helped organize the Seniors Pep Club. “It's just the excitement and the magic of these young girls.”
What these young girls have done is take the Mason basketball program from unknown to national prominence in just two years behind stars such as senior Dallas Williams (18.7 points, 8.7 rebounds), junior Beth Jones (11.5 points) and sophomore Michelle Munoz (16.1 points and 7.9 rebounds), daughter of Bengals Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz.
A communal feeling
“It's more fun than football,” said Mr. Munoz. “I love it. I'm like everybody else. When they're playing, I can't miss a game.”
But the team's rabid fan following insists pure hoops isn't the attraction. It's the communal feeling and the energy the girls' on-court play has brought to the town.
“This isn't about ball games,” said the Rev. Ron Trapp, 63, pastor at Heritage Presbyterian Church in Mason and a member of the Pep Club. “This is about relationships.”
“There's a great interaction here,” Mr. Stemmler said. “What this has done is unite the community. There's a lot of new people in Mason, and a lot of the old people have been here for years. At these games, they sit next to each other and become one, bringing the old and the new together.”
Small-town charm
Once, Mason was a typical small town. About 20 miles north of Cincinnati, it lay on the far edge of the city, close enough for residents to make a bolt into town but far enough away that it retained a country atmosphere. Main Street, a tiny strip in downtown that now seems forgotten, was the center of business activity. Everybody knew everybody else. Townspeople fashioned themselves as “small-towners” rather than suburbanites.
“It was the kind of town that was a mile long and two blocks wide,” said John Fox, a member of the Mason High School Athletic Hall of Fame who grew up there during the Depression and has become a big fan of the current Comets.
But as Cincinnati spread and grew, Mason inevitably became more suburban. Kings Island amusement park came in the 1970s, and the strip malls and chain restaurants and businesses like Procter & Gamble and hordes of new housing developments followed. In the last decade, Mason has been one of the area's fastest-growing suburbs, expanding from 11,000 residents in 1990 to a 1998 estimated population of 17,500.
But the small-town nuances remain. A farm field sits across the street from the Procter & Gamble complex, a tractor resting lonely on what was miles of wilderness just a few years ago. Churches are still the center of social activity. Main Street is peppered with American flags hanging from light poles, only recently replaced by white banners with a green comet on them to support the basketball team — the idea of the Seniors Pep Club.
“It's still perceived as a small town,” Mr. Munoz said.
“People knew it had to grow,” said Lucy Gorsuch, who graduated from Mason High in 1939 and now runs the Mason Historical Society. “I think it's been good for the town. For the most part, it's kept that small-town feeling. It's still a friendly town, just more spread out.”
Perhaps that is why this basketball team is causing such a buzz. Many other towns — small and suburban alike — support their teams, but in Mason, the fate of these girls has become the subject of talk, from the churches to the barbershops to the grocery stores and gas stations. The city council even reports on Mason games at its meetings.
Just about everybody's caught up in the fever.
“The new people moving in see all the older people going and saying, "What are we missing?'” Mr. Stemmler said.
“I had gotten away from sports,” Mr. Fox said. “Then my wife said, "Let's go see the girls play,' and you haven't been able to drag me away since. These girls got me back into it. They're a marvelous team.”
Spearheading the charge is the Seniors Pep Club, the brainchild of Comets coach Gerry Lackey. After Mason made a surprising run to the state championship game in 1997, Mr. Lackey approached Mr. Stemmler, known for his work with youth sports in Mason, about starting the fan club. It has since grown to more than 100 members, with most regularly attending games.
“For the seniors, it's not the Lady Comets basketball team out there,” Mr. Stemmler said. “It's their girls out there.”
The seniors even road-trip to out-of-town games, filing out of chartered buses and into crowded and sweaty gyms, where they sit en masse behind the Mason bench, wearing white sweat shirts to show their spirit. Though some members are hobbled by age, they still make the effort to go, calling ahead to find out how difficult it will be to get into the stands.
Many proudly sport buttons with a team picture on them, and care as much about this group of girls as for their own grandchildren. The seniors needed two buses to travel to last weekend's district championship in Wilmington, eventually having to turn some away for lack of space.
“The kids are such good kids,” Mr. Lackey said. “I think that has a lot to do with our fan support. It's easy to come out and root for kids that you would like your kids to grow up to be like. They're very much role models in the community.”
It's mutual admiration. The girls are just as impressed with the seniors, and the two groups get to know each other at pizza parties after Saturday-night home games.
“We like to party with them,” said Ms. Williams, the Comets' lone senior starter. “It's really helped us out a lot, as far as support. It's definitely a factor to raise the intensity. And it's rejuvenating the old people's lives.”
The seniors make up the hard-core element of Mason fandom, but the team is drawing families and students in amazing numbers as well. The gym was so packed at Wilmington last weekend, fans had to be turned away.
“When you have children, there's nothing like other people loving your kids,” said DeDe Munoz, Anthony's wife. “One of the things we recognized about Mason before we moved here was how much they really support their kids. It's awesome for the girls.
“And I think to have a chance to win the national title, a once-in-a-lifetime thing, is very interesting to people.”
A team team
Why does this team draw so much interest? Over and over, fans say it's the beauty of the way the Comets play as a team. Ms. Williams, who is headed to the University of Pittsburgh next year on a basketball scholarship, is the brightest star, but this is a team that is best when no one player stands out.
Defense is the Comets' pride — they averaged 71.8 points per game in the regular season while holding opponents to 30.4 — and the offensive scoring load is shared among four scorers in double figures (forwards Williams and Munoz and guards Jones and Jere' Issenmann, 10.5 points).
“You don't have one girl that has to carry the team,” said Mr. Munoz. “People enjoy that. They can follow the whole team.”
“Our strength is that we're so balanced,” Mr. Lackey said. “Teams can't really key on any one person. With Dallas and Michelle on the inside, teams have to respect those two, but Jones and Issenmann are great shooters. We have a whole mix of players. Racquel Ellis is very quick. We're not one-dimensional.”
Sitting alone in a dark and empty gym, the shadows of the basket creeping over the court after a long practice, Ms. Williams thinks back on this remarkable run with a smile and a tear. A nerve is struck when asked what she'll remember most fondly about the whole experience, and she has to pause to compose herself before answering.
“I think it will be the camaraderie,” she said, “because it's unlike anything I've experienced yet.”
A whole town could say the same thing.
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