EDWARDSBURG — After a 62-34 victory over Allegan, the Edwardsburg freshman boys’ basketball capped off an undefeated season, finishing 17-0. Magnifying this accomplishment is the fact that not only did the players excel on the basketball court, but they also dominated in the classroom.

The players’ grades back this up. Of the 12 players on the roster, nine of them made the honor roll, indicating that their first semester GPA was 3.34 or above, with four players achieving a perfect 4.0 GPA.

“School comes first,” said head coach Tony Gaideski. “Athletics is second.”

It is also a little more difficult for the players to excel on and off the court due to the fact that they are freshmen. Most of them are not used to the rigors of a high school basketball schedule or the amount of homework they get.

“We’re always talking about [how we need to] focus on our homework right after school and get that done,” Gaideski said. “The biggest change for all of these kids is it’s their freshman year. Instead of playing six weeks or a month of basketball, now they are getting four months of it.”

That’s why Gaideski would sometimes allow his players to use practice time to do school work, just as long as they communicated to their coach that they had to an important project or assignment to get done.

“Now that they are in high school, I’ve had some of my better kids come to me and say, ‘I’m going to be late for practice because I’ve got this project done for class, or I’ve got a test,’” he said.

This was particularly helpful given that freshmen basketball teams get the least desirable gym times to practice, which puts an extra burden on the players and parents.

“It’s total commitment from [the parents],” Gaideski said. “They’re all in. You can hear them at every game cheering them on. They get them to practice at 5 o’clock at night. Some of them have to rush home, get them to practice and get them something to eat or whatever.”

Parents then had to wait until 7:30 p.m. to pick their children up. This means that students would have to find time to do their homework before and after practice, which Gaideski points out takes quite a bit of discipline for a teenager.

“We’re just really blessed and fortunate here at Edwardsburg that the kids just have great parents, and they’re willing to do what it takes to help their kids be successful,” Gaideski said. “I think that’s the key. It doesn’t matter who the coaches are. We could have Bobby Knight. If they can’t dribble the ball, you’re not getting anywhere.”

It also helps that the players’ intelligence outside of the gym translated onto the court.

“The kids are doing really well in the classroom and when you tell them to do something on the basketball court, they’ve got it,” Gaideski said.

Another aspect of the undefeated season that Gaideski says is impressive is, typically, the main goal as a freshman team isn’t to win games, it’s to develop players and prepare them for JV and varsity basketball — something that Gaideski believes he accomplished in addition to winning games.

He developed these characteristics by having over two-hour practices and dedicating a set amount of time towards developing fundamentals and learning offensive sets and plays that they can build off of at the JV and varsity levels.

“Hopefully, when they go into the next year, they will have some of those qualities that they can bring to the next level and make our program a success it will be a success,” he said. “And it will be a success.”