Wednesday, March 15, 2000
Tough guy key for Elder
Wainscott gives Panthers attitude
BY CAREY HOFFMAN
Enquirer contributor
Basketball player are not the words that come to mind when you first see Elder's Joel Wainscott.
Football player? Yes. Throwback to another decade? Sure. A young Pete Rose? Possibly.
“I think my opponents look at me and think I'm mean,” he says. “On the field and on the court, I am.”
He's also fiery and competitive, which makes him essential in Elder's run to the Division I boys basketball regional semifinals. Elder (19-4) meets St. Xavier (21-2) at 6:15 p.m. Thursday at University of Dayton Arena in a game that marks the deepest point the two GCL archrivals have ever met in tournament play.
Wainscott is only 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds. He only averages about 10 points and four rebounds per game. But the senior is the bedrock under Elder's reputation as a scrappy, relentless basketball team.
“Much more than good stats, the biggest thing he brings is a toughness to our whole team,” Elder coach Joe Schoenfeld said. “He makes all our guys stronger.”
Schoenfeld points to Elder's upset of Western Hills last week in the Cincinnati sectional tournament. Back trouble had kept Wainscott out of Elder's tournament opener with Northwest and limited him to participating in only two of 12 practices leading up to West Hi.
“We didn't play very aggressively against Northwest and did not start out aggressively against West Hi,” Schoenfeld said. “But when Joel got in, we got our feet on the ground. His hustle plays and toughness jump-started us.”
Wainscott remembers the game as one of the favorites of his career. Why? Because it might have been the most physical game he's ever played in. “That was a brutal game,” he said.
Wainscott and 6-5 juniors Scott Benken and Eric Renzenbrink give Elder one of the most physical and best rebounding front lines in the city. A year ago that wasn't the case.
Elder owned just a 6-11 record in January of 1999 and appeared to be going nowhere. “We were just a team of jump-shooters,” Schoenfeld recalls.
Wainscott says the team decided they would play tougher and weren't going to lose anymore. Elder ended up in the district finals against unbeaten Beavercreek.
That taste of tournament success has carried over into this season.
Elder has been among the city's top five teams all year and Wainscott is its most recognizable player. At Elder's regular-season closer with St. X, his close-cropped hair, aggressive posture and a tooth lost years ago playing football made his looks the subject of derisive chants from the St. X student section.
“I get made fun of because of the missing tooth. I could have gotten it fixed a long time ago, but I kind of like it because I think (opponents) look at it,” he says.
He takes the comments of others about his distinctive appearance in stride — for instance, he laughs about a recent trip through a drive-thru window in Saylor Park where the female attendant asked if he wasn't Pete Rose Jr.
Outside of sports, Wainscott says, he's a pretty nice guy. His basketball days will come to an end with Elder's season, as he's headed to Morehead State University next year to continue his football career as a receiver.
So he's hoping for a big finish, which would include a victory in the rubber game with St. X.
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