Episode #174: Erik Kudronowicz

🏀 David vs. Goliath: How a Tiny Illinois School Built a Basketball Powerhouse 

What does it take to build a winning basketball program at one of the smallest schools in America?

In this episode of the Significant Coaching Podcast, Matt Rogers sits down with Erik Kudronowicz, Head Boys’ Basketball Coach at Scales Mound High School in Illinois — a town of roughly 400 people with a school enrollment of around 75 students.

Over the last seven years, Scales Mound has gone 167-57 with a State Runner-Up finish and a State 3rd Place finish.

If you loved the movie Hoosiers, this conversation will resonate with you.

Coach Kudronowicz shares insight on:
 🏀 Building culture in a small-town program
 🏀 Developing multi-sport athletes
 🏀 Accountability and leadership
 🏀 Creating consistency over time
 🏀 Coaching beyond the scoreboard

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Transcript

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On the latest edition of the Significant Coaching Podcast, a presentation of the coach Matt Rogers YouTube channel, available audio only everywhere you get your favorite podcasts. I'm your host, Matt Rogers. Today's guest is the embodiment of David versus Goliath. We hear those stories all the time in sports, but every once in a while, one actually feels real, one actually feels impossible. This week's guest is Eric Kudronowicz, the head boys basketball coach at Scales Mound High School in Illinois, about thirty to forty minutes from where I grew up, a town of roughly four hundred people. That's right, four hundred. With a school enrollment of around seventy-five students, that includes boys and girls. And over the last seven years, his program has gone a hundred and sixty-seven wins to fifty-seven losses. That includes a second and a third place finish in the state of Illinois. Think about that for a second. In an era where big schools have bigger budgets, bigger staffs, bigger player pools, and year-round specialization this small school basketball program continues to compete at an elite level with none of that. If you've ever watched the movie Hoosiers and wondered if stories like that still exist in modern basketball, they do. And in this conversation, Coach K, as his players call him, breaks down how that happens. We talk about culture, accountability, small town pride, player development, multi-sport athletes, and the responsibility coaches have to help young people become more than just basketball players. And before we jump into the conversation, don't forget to check out this week's blog and subscribe to our weekly newsletter at coachmattrogers.com for exclusive weekly recruiting and coaching insights with our recruit coach and parent tips of the week, our podcast updates, new recruiting books and journals, and more all right, let's get after it. Here's my conversation with Eric Kadronowitz. Coach Kudronowicz, so great to see you. I'm so impressed with everything you've done these last seven years, and I'm thrilled to have you on the show. Hey, thanks. I appreciate it. I'm thrilled to be on the show as well, the podcast. So I can't wait to see what we've got in store here for the next, you know, 30, 40 minutes. Yeah. We'll, we'll have a lot of fun. One of your assistants, Scott Keaster, is my cousin and really a brother. So for the last seven years, I've been getting text messages from October to March letting me know how the game's going and what's, what's going on. So I'm, I'm really in- ingrained into what you're doing and, and so happy for, for that. Paint a picture for everybody what the community is at Scales Mound and how many kids are in your school. Yeah, great opening question. Uh, the, the thing I've always told people is when you think of Hoosiers, we are Hoosiers every day. We live it every day. Our high school is 70 to 75 kids. Uh, we don't have a lot of fluctuation with those numbers. Sometimes we might dip into the 60s, but we don't have a lot. We're a village of 450 people. Um, we have a couple outlying areas that kind of feed into our district, nothing with major populations or anything like that. So, you know, we're a coed school on top of it, so we get 30 to 40 boys every year. Obviously, not all of them are gonna play basketball, so, you know, we start our program at a very young age in elementary. We try to get as many kids involved in basketball as we can, and then when we get to the high school level, we just try to put the best product out there. It's a community full of pride for their school. Um, we co-op a lot of sports with other schools in the neighboring area, but basketball, boys basketball, and girls volleyball are the only two that say Scales Mound on the front, and that's very important, very important to the people. It's very important to us that coach it, and ultimately it's very important to the players that represent that, that town, the village, and so forth. So it's a very prideful place, and we just try to put the best basketball we can out there night in and night out. It's fantastic. It, it's, it's, it's what you want high school basketball to be. You know? Uh, g- you want a group of kids that just love playing, love coming to the gym every day, love getting better. Y- y- you want them to have a coach like you that loves them to death and challenges them every day, but cares about them off the court, and, and it shows. So the last seven years, what a, what a great run. Talk about kind of when you got that gig and you're looking at the school and you're going,"75 kids, half of those are girls," what was your expectation seven years ago when you started this? Yeah, I, I mean, if you go back to when, when it, it opened up and I applied for the position, number one, I wanted to be head coach. That was the first thing. Yeah. Um, the program had just gone 0-27. I think in the seven years previous to that, they went 35 and 123. So I knew where it was. Right. But at the same time, I remember texting my brothers, and my youngest brother said it best. He's like,"Well, there's no, no other way to go but up," m- more, more or less, when they go 0-27 or where it's at. And it was no disrespect to the program at that time, it's just where it was. But I also was very fortunate when I was at UW-Platteville in the'90s that, you know, I had a mentor in basketball in Coach Ryan, a person that I knew very well, you know, his staff, and they ran the swing offense. That was what I ran for most of my early days. Um, was very fortunate my first four years of teaching I was in Benton, Wisconsin. Um, we had a very good little program built there. I got to see how they built it from the elementary on up, and just kind of as a sponge. And y- you know how it is when we're around basketball, we're just trying to take as much as we can from whoever's successful because we know it's gonna work. And so when I got to Scales Mound, we just started building our program from the foundation all the way up. It started with our high school kids that we had at the time, and then from there, we quickly moved it into the elementary, and we start our kids now in second grade with fundamentals. Second, third, fourth, fifth, we work real, real fundamental work as far as dribbling, passing, shooting, all the key elements of fundamental basketball. But then also as time had progressed, and if you go back to that group seven years ago, when they were young elementary kids in third and fourth grade, we started putting them on teams. And it wasn't so much like the AAU stuff that you see today. It's like, well, these two or three kids are gonna go play with these two or three kids, or these other kids and form an AAU team. It was like, no, we're gonna stick our Scales Mound kids, and they're all staying together. Wow. And we're just gonna play with just our kids to these different tournaments. In some tournaments they would run into AAU teams, and maybe sometimes they'd have success, and obviously sometimes they wouldn't. But we want our kids to play together, kind of that older mentality of we want our kids to be together all the time. And so as that progressed through junior high, you could see that this group was starting to mold into something pretty special. And then by the time they got to high school, and as we all know, at high school, you know, that's kind of the top for most players. And at the same time, there's injuries, there's other things that can factor in. You just don't know how the end is gonna go or how the result is gonna end up. But for a school of 75 kids that has never broke through fr- through the sectional round, let alone the super sectional round, and then make it to the state tournament, our group was able to do that in 2022, which was just phenomenal for the area, the community. And, you know, if you go back to the movie Hoosiers, like I kind of compare us to, there's that point where they start to get further into that tournament and then ultimately to the state tournament, and everybody's following them. That's how it was for us. Like, we would go to places, and we would have thousands of people in green. We don't have thousands of people in Scales Mound, but we would in the green'cause everybody wanted to cheer that small school on, and the pride that goes with it. And I think a lot of people kind of have that sort of affinity or that love for that small school, and that's who we are. Yeah, it's, it's hard not to get excited about the David and the, the David and Goliath- Yeah and Cinderella story. You know, it's, it's hard not to wanna be a part of that and be a part of that energy. For those, those coaches that listen, we have a ton of, of coaches that listen to this in all sports, but obviously we have a lot of basketball coaches,'cause I'm an old basketball coach. Talk about what you did to say,"You know what? I know where we wanna get to. I know what my reality is. I know where we gotta get to." You talked about the second, third, fourth graders, and dribbling and passing. When did you kinda say,"This is, this is where we're gonna make the difference, and this is what we're gonna do"? Is it, is it commitment? Is it commitment from the families? Commitment from the players? Is it technique? Is it how are we gonna practice? Where did you start putting the pieces together and say,"I can do this here at a school where we might only have 35 boys in the entire high school, but we're gonna do this"? Yeah. It's a, again, a great question, and really a- it was a kind of a combination of a few things. So obviously I take over, they're 0 and 27. Within those first few years, we struggle a little bit because you're trying to change the culture. Right. Which, again, I'd already been in some cultures and seen what I want it to look like, but as you get into it as a head coach, you start to take your own twist on things and your own nuances on it. But by that third year, we had won our first regional, and that was the first one Scales Mound had won in 20 years. So it's 2009, they gotta go back to 1989. That was 20-year span, that's the first one they won. We win three out of four regionals then. So we were doing some things right, but I also kinda felt like we were playing swing-style basketball, a lot of post ups, guard post up. You know, we're running that four out, one in, those back cuts, and all sorts of things. But I also felt like we need to do something a little bit more attacking, something a little bit more different. And I tho- I felt like the pace of the game had to be a little bit different for us,'cause we had a lot of games, like, in the 40s and 50s. I wanted to get games in the 60s and 70s. So then from our younger levels, and that's about the time these kids that, that broke through the state tournament were in our youth, we started really focusing on, we're basically teaching everybody to be a guard. Every kid from third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade on up, we were teaching them as many guard skills as we could. So we're gonna teach them the fundamentals of it. We're gonna teach them then how to play off the dribble, ultimately to finishing moves, and so forth. And from then, we've basically s- kind of followed that same blueprint for the last 10 years is we're basically teaching nothing but guards at Scales Mound. But as they get older, we're also gonna teach them how to play the post and all those other things. Yeah. But then as you watch us play now, we're, we average more points than we've ever averaged. We're, right now we're consistently 65 to 70 points a game. I believe in the last four years we've made over 1,000 three-pointers. Wow. Not that we're a three-point dominant shooting team, but we're a dribble drive team. We're four out, one in. Similar with our swing principles, but we're, we're dribble attacking because we want paint touches. That is our biggest stat that we, we track. You know, if you go back to basketball in the'80s, the'90s, maybe even the'70s- Paint touches were basically throw it into those post players. They're gonna go post moves, they're gonna create that double team. They'll get kick outs or maybe backside cuts or whatever. We're gonna kinda do the same thing, but we've found a way to use it off the dribble drive, and we really get teams to collapse. If they don't collapse, then we're gonna take layups and we're gonna take those inside moves, their finishing moves, maybe even create some fouls and get to the foul line, because in those last four years we've averaged 70% from the free throw line as a high school team as well. Um, so there's just some components that, as a coach, I've really narrowed down, and that's being able to shoot the three, being able to knock down free throws, then ultimately be able to attack the rim. And I think you've seen that across the board in not only the high school game, but the collegiate game and the pro game, how wide open it is. And- Yeah you use the term positionless basketball, that's kinda what we do in Scales Mountain, have been doing for probably, well, over a decade now, because we're kinda teaching kids all to be guards, but we're gonna be positionless. You're just gonna have a spot to occupy in the court, and then we have all these ways to attack the other team with, with what we're doing. Well, you, you understand, you're, you're probably, if you get a 6'5", 6'6" kid once every f- five to 10 years, you're gonna be lucky, or bigger than that. So y- you- You are correct. 6'5" would be lucky. We're, we- Yeah we get the 6'3"s, the 6'4"s. Yeah. Um, if we get anybody over 6'5", 6'6", 6'7", we're fortunate.'Cause yeah, most of our kids are probably in the 6'0" to 6'2" range at the most. Yeah. It's, it, it's, it's, uh, it's funny'cause I just had a great conversation with, uh, David Arseneau, who's the head coach at Grinnell College just up the road from you guys across the river, and Dave and I were talking about that, the importance of getting the ball into the paint. And when you can get into the paint off a, off a drive and off of attacks and off of cuts and curls, all of a sudden if you got, you got a couple kids that can shoot the ball, the whole world opens up. And- Yeah and, and we don't see enough of that. You see what Danny Hurley's doing at UConn and all the movement, but again, it's all predicated on can we get to the paint, collapse the defense, curls, back cuts, whatever, drives, and create that, create that space? So I, I love the innovation of what you're doing. I, I, and I wanna see more coaches do that. I, I f- I feel like- Yeah you're doing what you're doing and having the success you're having is'cause there's too many coaches that won't let themselves go there. Yeah, that's a good point. And, you know, as a, a coach early on too is trying to find that niche or that ment- that mentality of,"Okay, how much am I gonna let go or how much am I gonna control?" And as I've gotten older, um, I've even used the term once in a while, I s- I feel like the best coaching I do is when I don't really coach. Because the kids on the floor know exactly like what I want it to look like, what I want it to be like, and then they're making all those adjustments in the game. And that's kinda where our offense has gone. I mean, if you think about our four out or even our five out, a lot of times the kids are, really have three options. It's either gonna be cut, you're gonna screen the ball, or you're gonna screen away. And we leave it that simple, and then from there they're reading the defense. If he's gonna overplay, like you said, backdoor cut. You know, if they're gonna sit and collapse, then we know to follow the double team, we're gonna walk into a layup. Like, we're gonna take advantage of what the defense is doing, and that's really what I've coached the last 10 to 12 years is really,"Here's what the defense is gonna do, here's how we're gonna take advantage of it," and the kids just go out and play. Coach, I live in a town in Colorado. We're about 100,000 people now. We have two high schools, two huge high schools, probably 1,500 kids in each high school. Wow. And I go over, and I've coached a little bit with them, and I've, I've done some volunteer coaching and helped them out. And I don't see the head coaches doing anything with the JV. I don't see them doing anything with the sophomore or the freshman. I don't see them taking time to go visit the middle schools and doing camps and clinics and developing. Uh, it's kind of what you have done, is you've built, literally built this from the ground up. So my question is, at what point did you start seeing freshmen come in the door that you've never really coached before, and they understood some of the principles that you knew they needed to already have to play varsity? When did you start seeing that, that attention to that detail down in the lower levels, that it started to click, and kids started saying,"I wanna play like that. I have to play like those varsity kids"? Yeah, that's a great question. Again, I mean, I think it goes back to kind of the product you put out on the court, and it's what they see. I mean, if you go back to our last, you know, seven to 10 years and what the, the fans and the kids have been able to see and how some of our all s- like, we've had all-state players. Yeah. Um, before that, Scales Mound didn't have all-state players. Yeah. So when they get a chance to see those types of players, so just to, you know, drop a few names, like if you go back to our state team, we had Ben Werner, who was an excellent post player, who's now playing D2 football, excellent defensive end. You know, just the way he went about his business in the post, but he was an excellent passer. He finished second on our team in assists that year because he understood what it was when he was taking those doubles and triples, where his cuts were gonna be, and just how to be a better team play- player, teammate. Yeah. But then we also had Benjamin Van de Goe on that team, who was electric off the dribble, 6'4", could throw it down with two hands easily, just a really good athlete, but just how he went about his business. But he was also a kid that was always in the weight room. He was always in the gym. He always put in time afterwards. So then kids are starting to see that, like,"If that's how he goes about his business, then that's how I gotta go about my business." So I've always kinda felt that way, and I even go back to my early days as a coach. And I've always kind of been this coach. If I ask kids to be in the weight room, I'm in there lifting with them. If I'm in, if they're in, asked to come into the gym for a certain amount of time, I'm in the gym with them. Have I sacrificed a lot of family time for that? Of course I have. Yeah. But I also have to show these kids how important they are to me, how important they are to our program, and I think that's a big thing, a big ask for coaches, and I think maybe some can handle it and some maybe can't over the time. But as a coach, you have to commit to your kids just as much as you want them to commit to you and your program. There, there's such a wide range of, of what we call motivation from, from basketball coaches, and any coaches, but- Yeah specifically in the world of basketball. When you think about the motivating that you've done and the coaching you've done, and how you've gone about your tone and your business, how do you define that? How, how do you, how do you describe...'Cause kids aren't just showing up and you're going,"All right, boys. Let's play some five on five today." I, I just don't see you doing that. Yep. So when you think of the word motivation, what does that mean to you and, and, and how does it affect how you go about coaching? Yeah, I would say, you know, for the most part, I would be a, a quiet, intense individual, to the point of they understand where I want the results to be. I'm also that person that's always telling our teams, our players, our individuals in our workouts,"This is what I expect out of you. This is what I, you know, think you can be, and now we gotta work together to get there." And I, I've, I've always put it that way, that we're all in this together. Whether it's the team part of basketball or whether it's in an indivi- individual workout where we're working together, me and that player, either way, we gotta do this together. We gotta find out how to make your, you know, footwork better, how to make your individual skills better. But if we can work together to do that, then ultimately it's gonna get us where we have to go. And at the same time, we create that trust, and I've always trusted in my players. I feel that they've probably always trusted in what, what I've asked them to do. And I think that's a big thing too, is you gotta be able to put that trust out there. But you also have to show up for them, because if you don't show up for them, they're gonna know that. They're gonna understand that, and then I think that's where maybe you have a step back in, in, say, success or what you're asking these kids to do. So, you know, to me, trust is always important, and then you gotta show up each and every day. When w- if we talk to your kids and we talk to them about Coach K, you know, which is you, I know they call you Coach K, how would they say they've grown under you, and why they've grown under you? Yeah, good question. Uh, I would, I, you know, I think it's the consistency, number one. Um, like I said, showing up each and every day, but then it's also that expectation, you know. And it depends on what family they come from, how, what their expectations are within their family, but I always have that expectation that if we're gonna show up, we're gonna put the work in, we wanna be the best. Yeah. And that's, and I ask them to do that as they go out into life. And I've always told them, what we do in, in basketball in Scales Mound is gonna be important, and it's gonna be important in the four years that we do it. But I said,"As soon as you graduate out of here, you're always, number one, welcome back to practices." And it's amazing how many alumni show up to our practices just to hang out, just to put their face in there to be like,"Hey, Coach K, what's going on?" Talk a little about, little bit about life. And we're talking the guys that are currently in college, but we're talking about the guys that have already been through college that are now in their professional careers doing things. They'll still show up to practices. And at the same time, I've always told them,"I wanna talk about all your successes as you continue in life,"'cause they're gonna be way more successful than what we did here in our four years. Because those are gonna be important in our four years, but the rest of the things you do in life, and I love it when our players come back and tell me all the great things. We have an alumni basketball game that we play in, in December every year, and it just continues to grow with the number of players, and it's just great to get a chance to chat with them and see what they're up to. Uh, obviously we have kids that have stayed local, but we also have guys that have gone off to other parts of the United States or the Midwest, and for them to come back for that one night and share their stories, it's great. So, you know, all of it, like I said, being at, doing this for as long as I have, I mean, those are the things that get me the most excited is hearing all the things that these guys have gone off and done. And, you know, I'm just a stepping stool along, or stepping stone along that. You know, I'm part of it, and I hope they enjoy the four years that they get to play basketball, not to mention the youth part of it. And at the same time, I hope they can take some lessons that we've learned as a basketball player and a basketball team, and then ultimately maybe some of the knowledge I've shared with them and they take it with life. When kids come to me and they, uh, they want help getting recruited to play in college, one of the questions I always ask,"Do you wanna go somewhere where there's a legacy already built and there's already a history of, of winning, or do you wanna go somewhere and build that legacy?" And you've done that. You've got all these kids that have built this legacy at Scales Mound, and they own it. They're part of it. A- And it's- Yeah so special when you get to do that. And I always encourage kids, you know, yeah, you can, you can go to Duke, you can go to Illinois Wesleyan. Y- you know, you can go to all these schools that have won championships, but what if you go somewhere that hasn't won and you get to create that? And it sounds like that's, that's a real piece of the heart of what your program is now. Oh, for sure. You know, and if you go back to when we started it, that was part of the piece for me. It was like I would- I wanted to establish a program, see if I could put something together with the help of all the people that have helped along the way, and there's so many people, from assistant coaches, to the players, to, you know, the, the parents, to the community in general. But the same goes with those players, exactly. They've built this, and I've always told them this, year after year after year when the seasons end, that every success we've had, it's because of those kids and the work that they've put in, and I think that's why they come back as much as they do. But you're exactly right. The players have built this program. This is where we're at, and it's all because of the work that they've done, and I couldn't be prouder of a group of kids. It's awesome. You know, I, I, I started this podcast from a very personal perspective, because I, I, I love talking to coaches. I love learning, and it's really become a masterclass for me, having great coaches, and leaders, and teachers like you. Um, i- it's, I... When I get a great coach like you in, in front of me, I always wanna talk about mental performance and mental health a little bit, because it's such a big part of what we do every day now, and, and, and maybe when you and I were kids, it was like the last thing anybody would think about, you know? Um, talk to me about how you help your athletes handle adversity and frustration, and, and help them when their c- that confidence is, is low. What, what are some of the things that you focus on with, with those issues? Yeah, I mean, it, it's a very important part of what we do as coaches. I mean, I'm always keeping an eye on each player. You kind of, from day one, you know where they're at mentally, but you also have to keep an eye on it. You gotta keep a pulse on it. You gotta know what's going on. And so when you have your opportunities to, to pull players aside and talk to them, because it's an ongoing thing. Even your strongest players will sometimes start to doubt their skills or whatever else, and then you're gonna have other players who maybe are always in that constant doubt, and therefore sometimes it might even get to a spot where, you know, we have to intervene. But at the same time, as a coach, I'm always trying to, to be that guy that's that voice of reason. Like, so if, if I see a kid struggling with his shot, I'm not gonna go over there and tell him what's wrong. I'm gonna be like,"Okay, why don't we just make a little tweak here or a little tweak there," and make it like it's something else that's causing the problem, not them, or not mentally them, and sometimes that's all it takes. And I had that this year with a couple of my players where I went over and made a couple tweaks with their shot and their body position, and the next thing you know, they're out there just back to the way they were playing. Um, so sometimes it's the approach, and I'm also that kind of suggestive kind of coach where I'm not gonna come over the top with anything. I just wanna come over and be like,"Okay, let's try this. Let's do this." And it's something you're doing every single day. You've gotta always try to find a way to get the best out of your player, whether it's- Yeah physically, but then also mentally, and sometimes- Like I said, it could be a, a chat, it could be a joke, it could be something else, but you've always gotta come in and let them know that, again, that trust is there, that approach is there, that this is somebody that can help me out too. And it's nice when your player comes to you as well and be like,"Coach, I need a little help." And I'm like,"Okay, I got you. Let's sit down- Yeah talk about it." So yeah, that's a very important part of the game, um, as a coach. It's not always the X's and O's. There's a lot of other things going on behind the scenes that we've gotta take care of. One of the things I remember, and I, you know, I grew up in a really s- I, I grew up in a village as well, in the village of Lena. Yeah. There's the imposter syndrome, you know, we talked about that, David versus G- Goliath. There's, there's a real courage to being able... Most of these kids, I, I never really left Lena until I was 18 years old. You know, we- For sure. Yeah we didn't really go on vacations. We might have drove somewhere to go camping or something. But when I left for college, every- everything was changed. Talk a little bit about where that courage comes from.'Cause once you get out of the, out of your league, and you gotta go play in a regional, all of a sudden you're playing teams from Freeport, and Rockford, and Chicago, and Champaign, and Peoria, and Springfield, and these much bigger cities. And I remembered how just overwhelming that was for me as a player. What, how do you handle that? How, how do you talk to your kids when you know you gotta go play in the championship game in this huge arena, you know, and there's 10,000 people in the gym? Where, where, where does that conversation begin? Yeah, so, and, you know, that's not an easy one, especially for, you know, coaches that have been in those situations. When you're in any kinda championship game, whether it's a sectional level, a super sectional level, like you said, even the state level, you're playing in arenas where there's thousands of people. Um, but the biggest thing I've always approached our kids is I've always told them,"Number one, it's basketball." Right."Like, it's not gonna change. Like, everything-" Right that we've done to this point has exactly prepared you for what you're about to do." Now, with the opponents, what we try to do is we put probably one of the toughest schedules, and I've always been that way since day one. Even when maybe our teams weren't, like, a state championship level team, we, we were always gonna play the best, because if you're gonna be the best, you have to beat the best, and I've never backed down from that mentality. Right. Um, I'm not gonna go schedule a lighter team just to get wins an- and make things look better. So we've always scheduled difficult, and then that's also part of it, and I've always felt like, and this for me personally in life as well, I've learned more in difficult situations than I ever have in easy situations. Right. So the more difficult positions we can put these kids in, and some of that actually goes back to our practices. When we're practicing, we have segments- Where as the official, I make a lot of bad calls, and that's on purpose, because they need to be able to handle that. Sometimes we let the practice get a little physical, because sometimes the games get physical. Sometimes we call the practice really, really tight, because sometimes the games get called tight. So we prepare them in practice as much as we can, but then when you get in those live situations, it also comes down to the opponents who, that you play against. And I remember back to that first team that broke through in 2022, we had an opportunity to go do a shootout that year. We had one more game on our schedule we could play, so we got to go to Shabbona, Indian Creek, and we got to take on Chicago Leo. Wow. Like, we, Scales Mound hadn't played anybody out of Chicago at this point. Right. And Chicago Leo at that point, we had just broke through as the number one ranked team in class 1A, which had never happened. Um, I don't think any team from the NUIC had ever been ranked number one in the state, and here's Scales Mound ranked number one. And who's ranked number one in 2A? Chicago Leo. Right. So you had number one ranked Scales Mound versus number one ranked Chicago Leo. Great game. Um, and I think that helped us with our state tournament run because later when we got to the super sectional to g- to advance to state, we took on Chicago Marshall, one of the staples of the Chicago Public League. I think they're the third most winningest team in Chicago Public League, uh, history. But so we got to take them on. I think our Chicago Leo matchup helped us with that because of the speed of the game, the way the game was played, and just in some of the preparation things we could take from that. So- Yeah there's lots of ways to prepare your kids, but I think a couple of things, we always put them in difficult situations, we always challenge them, but we also ask them to just play the game that they know. Don't make it any more than that. Awesome. Tell me you got out the tape measure when you got to the state, the final four the first time. We, not when we got to the, uh, final four because we were the second game, and with all the- Yeah TV stuff and everything like that. Yeah. And we didn't get to practice on the, uh, court at- Yeah Champaign. Like, it just wasn't something we were allowed to do. If we would've got to practice, I would've done it. But when we got to NIU, Northern Illinois University- Right super sectional, we did. Fantastic. We got out there,'cause- And if, and, and if you haven't watched- We had enough time to get on the- If you haven't watched Hoosiers, it's one of the classic moments of one of the greatest sports movies ever, where the, they put Ollie, the little- Yep the, the, the last man on the bench, on the big guy's shoulders, and, and, and Gene Hackman gets out the tape measure and they, and he measured, they measure the rim down to the floor, and he goes,"You'll find that that's the same height as it is in our old gym back home," right? Yep, exactly. Nope, we did the same thing at NIU, and the kids loved it, and they're all standing around the hoop, and- Oh, that's great it's one of those cool moments. That's so great. Uh, Coach, you're, you're so impressive. I'm so excited about, um, what you've done, but I'm so excited that a town like Scales Mound has someone like you- That's giving these kids so much, and giving them a life, and giving them hope, and giving them, giving them a, a, a path to have a much bigger life and to think bigger.'Cause I remember it was... You know, I had guidance counselors tell me,"Well, you're just gonna go to Highland Community College. You're gonna, you know, that's your option." You know? And, and then when you're done, you go be a barber like your dad or go, you know, get into HVAC or something. I didn't really understand of the world, and I'm so glad they have somebody like you to do that. Um- I, I appreciate that. And, you know, I'm just fortunate and a big firm believer of, you know, God puts you where you need to be when you need to be there. And- Yeah you know, I'm supposed to be in Scales Mound right now doing the things I'm doing, and just been very fortunate, like I said, to have the kids that I've been able to coach, the families that have been able to be so committed, the community that's so committed, and the school as well. So it's just been a blessing and just been very fortunate. And it's, it's been fun, too. I've enjoyed every bit of it. Good. Good. That makes me really happy to hear. I wanna do a little rapid fire to let- Okay our audience get to know you a little bit, do some fun questions, and then, uh, we'll come back, and we'll do a part two on Monday, and we're gonna get into recruiting with you. Um- Awesome favorite pre-game music or practice music? Ooh, good one. Uh, a lot of times we like to dig back to the'80s, and so can't go wrong with a little Don't Stop Believin'. Nice little Journey. Love it. Yep. Um, favorite gym you've coached in? Man, I'd have, I'd have to start with Champaign. Like, when you're on the U of I's court, like- It's pretty impressive it's a dream come true. But if we go local high schools, um, man, there's so, so many good ones. Um, let's go with, let's go with River Ridge. They have a beautiful facility down there. That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Uh, what's your favorite off-day activity away from basketball? Golf. Love to golf. Anybody who knows me will find me on the golf course. Last thing,'cause that's our, that's our podcast, what does significance mean to you as a coach and an educator? Oh, it means a lot of things. I mean, right off the cuff, it just means that you are making a difference in people's lives, and you're doing things that are going to help people, whether it's in the initial or somewhere down the road. And, and being significant means very important things. So, um, I just hope to make significant situations better for these people in the now, in the future. Somewhere along the lines, I hope they look back and say, like,"I hope Coach K helped me out in this situation," just like you're helping my, you know, say, myself out, allowing me to come onto this podcast or other coaches or other people. Significant is what we need to be thinking more of. Okay? So that's what I got for you. Thanks for... That's fantastic. Thanks for doing this, Coach. Um, you got a big fan in me. You got a big supporter in me. And, um, keep ta- keep taking care of big Scott Kuester for me. I appreciate that, too. It's a chore. I keep doing it each and every day, but I enjoy every bit of it, as you would too, so. Good. And for everybody listening, come back on Monday. Coach and I are gonna do part two, and we're gonna dive into recruiting from his perspective, and it'll, it'll be a good one. So, thanks, Coach. Hey, thank you. I appreciate it. Go Hornets. What a great conversation with Eric Kadronowitz, head boys basketball coach at Scales Mound High School in Illinois, a town of 400, a school of 75 students, and yet 167 wins over the last seven years with multiple final four finishes in one of the toughest basketball states in the country. That doesn't happen by accident. It happens through culture and consistency, accountability, and people pulling together around something bigger than themselves. Eric is proof that you don't need the biggest school, the biggest budget, or the biggest name to build something meaningful. You need vision and belief and a commitment to doing the little things well over a long period of time. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you come back for part two on the Significant Recruiting Podcast, where Eric shares perspective for recruits, parents, and coaches navigating today's recruiting landscape. And as always, you can find more podcasts, blogs, books, journals, recruiting strategy sessions, and speaking information at coachmattrogers.com. Until next time, stay focused on what you can control, stay humble, and keep chasing significance.