Boys basketball juniors Ethan Virgil and Gunner Ello ready themselves for varsity roles this season

Patrick Mochen
Onwardtrojans.com

Chesterton’s boys basketball junior class returns five players from last year. The Trojans only lost two graduating seniors, which means the team returns tons of varsity experience. Although much of the roster looks the same, the team is looking for juniors Ethan Virgil, a 6-foot-2 JV guard last season, and Gunner Ello, a 6’4” forward who played a mix of varsity and JV last year, to into bigger roles this year.
“Ethan's got some spring to him, he's longer, he can shoot, he had a good summer for us and we need to make sure we develop him because we lose (seniors) Jaylon (Watts) and Logan (Pokorney) next year, and he’s going to fit a big role but he also has to be ready this year to play as well,” head coach Marc Urban said. “I’m excited for him.”
Virgil, a soccer player in his youth, focused solely on basketball for the first two years of high school, but decided to return to soccer as a junior. Even while doubling up in sports this past summer, he has managed to assert himself as a varsity player this year. Virgil would head from his soccer morning practices to the high school gymnasium for basketball. Ello hit the weight room consistently in the offseason, and credited strength and conditioning coach Matt Wagner for his improvement.
“He’s gotten stronger and bigger in the weight room,” Urban said. “He’s got a good strong body where he’s hard to move, and I think that piece is huge. If he got switched (onto a guard), I’m good with it. He's got good feet. We’re going to need his ability to rebound.”
Junior point guard TJ Ray, who enters his third varsity season, took note of his classmates finding roles on varsity.
“Gunner is becoming another guy we can give the ball to in the paint,” Ray said. “He worked on his body a lot over the summer. He got a lot bigger and stronger, and he’s now getting more accustomed to varsity, also with Ethan, just knowing his role, knowing when to cut, playing really good defense, and knowing the pace between JV and then going to varsity.”
Ello added, “Virgil can shoot really well and he can push the ball in transition. He knocked off the rust already. He was a little shaky when he came back (from fall soccer), but he’s back at it now. He can dunk now, too.”
Ray and junior point guard Malachi Ransom have both proven their value on the varsity court, not only playing point efficiently but also setting an example.
“TJ’s a great leader,” Ello said. “He was able to talk me through all the stuff I didn’t know since I was on JV. I love the way Malachi plays and brings the intensity. You know he’s there when he plays cause he changes the game.”
Ransom moved from Chicago at the start of last school year and was playing varsity immediately. He received a technical foul during a game at the start of the year, which may have given some fans a bad first impression.
“Malachi is a super polite, super nice kid,” Urban said, “has a really good personality. You get a perception of somebody when it’s your first encounter with them and you have this narrative when in reality that has nothing to do with who he is because he’s a super nice kid. He will tell you that he has probably grown up a lot from that piece of it, but that's just what he was used to in Chicago. Teaching my guys to be better men is the part of my job I really enjoy, because we've got 23 guaranteed games and the other 300 days we go yearround, there’s no crowd or scoreboard around, you’re continuing to work for something.”
Several current juniors who were on junior varsity last year didn’t return.
Urban said, “The good thing with those guys that are not playing, we had really good conversations, and they’re good kids. I love watching them compete in football and other sports. There’s always going to be an end date at some point but to have a good relationship with those guys means a lot to me and it's how you want that to be done.”
Crosby Moore returned and is the fifth and final junior on the team, a JV corner sharpshooter.
“Crosby keeps fighting and I wouldn’t waste minutes on JV with him if I didn't think he was capable at some point,” Urban said. “I think his resilience and his continuing to stick with it will be really good for him. You don’t keep guys around that don’t put the program and winning first and he does that.”