Seeing a shooting star in Ellsworth (February 12)

ELLSWORTH, MINN. -- Cody Schilling, basketball star turned temporary tour guide, is behind the wheel of his 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix, pointing out some of the sights in his hometown.

"That’s one of our two gas stations," he says, driving slowly through the southwestern Minnesota village of 500 on a peaceful winter afternoon. Then comes the grocery store, the veterinary clinic, the lumber yard, the cafe, the bar, the bank … you get the idea. Small town.

Ellsworth is east of Sioux Falls, S.D., west of Worthington, one mile north of the Iowa border and far off the beaten path. The easy cliché is to call it a mixture of Lake Wobegon and Mayberry, and it would be an ideal location for someone in the witness protection program to hide, except for this: Everybody knows everybody here.

As Schilling drives south down the main drag, an Air Jordan air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror, he points to the west and then to the east.

"You go one block that way or one block that way, and it’s the edge of town," he says.

Yes, Ellsworth is tiny. But thanks to Schilling and his teammates past and present, Ellsworth is indisputably on the map.

The Panthers are the defending champions of Class 1A basketball, and Schilling is the star. Even if Ellsworth doesn’t reach the state tournament for the fourth time in six years, the 6-5 senior has a solid chance of becoming the state’s career scoring leader for boys.

Not that he cares.

"I don’t even think that stuff’s in his mind," coach Markus Okeson said. "He could easily score 50 in every game, but he’s all about the team."

Schilling, who has been in the starting lineup since eighth grade, is the fourth boys’ player in state history to score 3,000 points. He reached 3,000 by scoring 31 and 32 points in back-to-back, Friday-Saturday games earlier this month. On the surface, the weekend was filled with anticipation, excitement and celebration. Behind the scenes were nervousness and togetherness.

The weekend’s activities shed light on basketball, as well as life, in Ellsworth.

• • •

The boys’ basketball players wear neckties to school on game days. On this Friday afternoon, Cody Schilling is sporting a basketball-themed tie as he shows a couple of visitors around the school.

Right inside the schoolhouse door is a large trophy case dedicated to the Panthers’ recent success. Schilling reaches around the right side of the wooden case, flips a switch, and the lights inside the trophy case come alive. The booty includes trophies from section and state tournaments, nets that have been sliced off rims, photos of grinning boys and commemorative basketballs.

The tour continues to a wing that houses most of the elementary classrooms. As little kids walk toward Schilling, they say, "Hi, Cody," and reach up for a high five from the biggest celebrity in town.

"I know everybody in the school," Schilling says. "And I probably know their parents, too."

He takes the visitors to the senior lounge, a little basement room where students can sit in old furniture and play video games during study halls. Next is the darkroom, where he has been developing photos of junior varsity basketball games he shot for the school yearbook.

In the tiny lunchroom, class photos from 1936 through 1955 survey the scene from the walls. The boys’ locker room is even smaller, with letter jackets hanging on locker doors that are not locked.

"It’s Ellsworth," Schilling says. "If someone stole your stuff, you can narrow it down pretty quickly."

After a quick peek into Coach Okeson’s sixth-grade room, Schilling has to get to choir practice. The choir will sing the anthem before the next afternoon’s girls-boys basketball doubleheader, and choir/band director Nathan McAmis wants some tuneup time.

Schilling sits on a chair between a drum set and an iron radiator. His little brother, Casey, and several other teammates are also in the choir of seventh- through 12th-graders, as is the entire varsity girls’ basketball team.

In order to get a better feel for the next day’s performance, McAmis takes his singers to the gym. They stand at center court and sing in the empty space, which is a complete and total throwback to basketball of yesteryear.

Other than a new coat of paint — which the Schilling family helped slap on a couple of years ago — the gym looks as it did when it was built in 1955. On one side are eight rows of bleachers. On the other is a stage. The basketball teams sit on folding chairs in front of the stage, feet resting on the out-of-bounds line. The official scorer and public address announcer sit at a table on the stage, looking down on the court. Two sets of small metal bleachers allow for expanded seating on the stage.

Banners from the 12 Red Rock Conference schools hang on the wall, as do boys’ basketball state tournament banners from 2003, 2006 and 2007. One corner of the gym is the unofficial headquarters; that’s where superintendent/principal/athletic director/driver’s education teacher George Berndt and custodian Art (Beaver) Schweitzer watch the games from folding chairs.

A couch also rests in that corner. A raffle is held before every game, and the winner and two friends watch the game from the couch; snacks are brought to them at halftime. Commonly, the couch seats are won by a grade-schooler. Which means that the occupants of the couch — removing their shoes, sharing candy and chit-chatting back and forth — often are oblivious to the action on the court.

• • •

The Ellsworth Panthers are in the locker room, getting revved up for a Red Rock Conference game against the Wolverines of Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin. There are two signs on the wall. One is a poster of the Timberwolves dance line. The other is a hand-drawn warning: "Boys, Mom doesn’t work here, so clean up your mess!!!"

As the players wait for the B squad game to end, they stretch, fidget, dribble, sit, wait and wait some more.

The pregame locker-room music, blaring from two speakers wired to an iPod on a little table, is a driving, churning song titled "Remember The Name" by the hip-hop group Fort Minor.

The song include a few lyrics that would make Grandma’s ears burn. During the chorus, players’ lips move as they mouth the words:

Trevor Gruis, a 6-8 sophomore center and the team’s No. 2 scorer, leaves the locker room to check on the status of the B squad game. As Gruis peeks into a corner of the gym, Beaver the custodian spots him.

Beaver, wearing a western shirt, jeans, cowboy boots, gray hair and a giant ring of keys on his right hip that would make a lesser man list to starboard, poses a question to Gruis about the music that’s thumping from the locker room: "Hey Gruesome, what’s all that racket in there?" No answer is necessary or expected.

Schilling, who Okeson says has "the ultimate poker face," has grown more vocal as a senior but is not the rah-rah type. He’s the ice of the team, and junior guard Adam Van Der Stoep is the fire.

As Okeson talks, Van Der Stoep — a fidgeting bundle of excitement before tipoff — jumps in to finish the coach’s sentences. As Okeson begins talking about communicating on defense, Van Der Stoep hollers, "Everybody’s gotta talk on D! That’s the only way we’re gonna get this done!"

Schilling leads a team prayer, asking the Lord to "help us use the talents you’ve blessed us with."

As the team leaves the locker room to warm up, the table bearing the iPod and speakers is carried into the gym. For public ears, the musical stylings are a bit different.

"Ba ba ba ba barbara Ann … Ba ba ba ba barbara Ann." Yes, Fort Minor has been replaced by the Beach Boys.

Assistant coach Steve Kellen explains: "We don’t allow any of that rap crap out here."

• • •

Clayton and Carla Schilling and their three sons form a family with two major ties: home and basketball. They all grew up in this region of Minnesota and Iowa, and so far they haven’t strayed.

Clayton, who runs a corn, soybean and hog operation on the family farm 2 miles east of town, played football and basketball at Ellsworth, graduating in 1979. Carla grew up 13 miles to the south in Little Rock, Iowa. She is the career scoring leader at Little Rock High, where she played six-on-six basketball and graduated in 1981. Her school record will stand forever because Little Rock has since merged with nearby George High School.

Curt, who ranks No. 2 (behind Cody) on the Ellsworth career points list, is a 6-4 senior and leading scorer on the basketball team at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, which is 40 miles to the south. Casey is a 6-1 eighth-grader and the only eighth- or ninth-grader on the Ellsworth varsity.

After Curt graduates from college in the spring, he will return to Ellsworth and rent some farmland from his parents. In August he will marry Molly Gort, a first-year teacher in the high school. Among her students in chemistry, anatomy and photography classes is her future brother-in-law, Cody Schilling.

"Cody’s a good student," Molly says, sitting with Curt in the first row of bleachers before the Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin game. "Not that he needs me to pad his stats."

Family — and the Schilling’s soon-to-be-extended family — is the key to everything here.

Sitting at the dinner table in a home filled with family photos and basketball memorabilia, Carla and Clayton talk about what basketball success means to Ellsworth.

"It’s a big dream, especially when you come from a small community," Carla says.

"There’s an old saying: Dream a dream and live it, too," Clayton says. "That’s what this is like."

The state tournament is penciled on every calendar in town, but it hasn’t always been this way. The 2003 trip to state was the first in school history in any sport, so Panthers fans try not to take success for granted.

The Panthers won two games when Curt was an eighth-grader and nine the next season. Then came 20 victories in 2002, followed by that first trip to state in 2003 and a second-place finish.

"There were probably three years in a row before this run where we were something like 3-60," Clayton says.

It had been that way for a long time. When Cody was in third grade and Ellsworth was playing a powerful team from Southwest Minnesota Christian, Clayton, anticipating a blowout, told the kids, "If we stay within 50 points of ’em, I’ll take us out for pizza."

The final margin was 49, and little Cody jumped up and down in a pepperoni-fueled celebration.

• • •

A question is posed to Cody Schilling: What do kids in Ellsworth do for fun?

"Sometimes we’ll go to the softball field and play slow-pitch with guys and girls," he says. "We’ll go to somebody’s basement and watch movies. And a lot of the time we’ll just go to the gym and play basketball."

Ah, there’s part of the secret of this town’s basketball success. (The flip side is that other sports have seen a glory shortage in recent years. Okeson, asked to name the second-biggest sport in Ellsworth, says, "I wouldn’t even guess. Maybe volleyball? I don’t even know.")

But the turnaround of Ellsworth boys’ basketball can surely be traced to long hours in the gym, as well as on the outdoor court behind the school.

Curt Schilling, who was on the team when this run of victories began, remembers when boys began playing serious summer basketball on the outdoor court. Farm kids such as the Schillings rode their bikes into town.

"Guys wanted to win," he said. "It was real cool to see the court filled with kids on those summer nights."

• • •

With only 60 students in grades nine through 12, Ellsworth is the second-smallest public, community, nonmerged high school in Minnesota to have its own boys’ and girls’ basketball teams. The only one that’s smaller is Goodridge, with 43 students.

Ellsworth has no wrestling, baseball or hockey teams; it has cooperative teams in football, cross-country and golf with Hills-Beaver Creek. The Red Rock Conference is filled with hyphenated, slashed and otherwise merged schools: Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin, Round Lake-Brewster, Westbrook-Walnut Grove, Murray County Central, Southwest Star Concept.

There are 19 students in the senior class at Ellsworth. But any talk of possible mergers with neighboring schools is quickly quashed.

"We had a referendum that passed three, four, five years ago," said Berndt, who came to Ellsworth as the industrial arts teacher in 1964. "There were about 300 votes for and 16 against. The people want this school, and our enrollment is holding steady at about 180, 190 kids K through 12."

• • •

Cody Schilling, who averages 29 points, 10 assists and eight rebounds per game, is the ringleader of a very talented team. Trevor Gruis is a force under the basket. His brother, 6-4 senior Brandon Gruis, and 6-2 Van Der Stoep form a skilled, sharpshooting backcourt, and 6-4 senior Weston DeBerg pairs with Schilling at forward.

The Panthers are 17-2 and ranked No. 6 in Class 1A. After they roll past Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin 87-57, Wolverines coach Shawn Naas is asked what has made the Panthers so good.

"A lot of it is the Schillings and the Van Der Stoeps," he says. Last season, senior Aaron Van Der Stoep made 10 three-point shots in a one-point state championship victory over Cass Lake-Bena. He ranks third on the school scoring list, behind the two Schilling boys, and now plays at Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

"The kids play a lot of basketball down here," says Naas, a 17-year coach. "And Cody is something special. You can’t stop him. You try to make him do other things, but he does everything so well. You want to make the other kids beat you."

Schilling is both a shooter and a slasher. He makes 70 percent of his two-point shots and 48 percent from the three-point line. When he drives to the basket, he frequently draws fouls. And he always looks to pass.

"You know what you’re going to get from him, and it’s the same thing night in and night out," Okeson says. "He’s going to do what he needs to do to win."

• • •

Last season Schilling was the only junior named to the Associated Press all-state first team, which included current Gophers player Blake Hoffarber of Hopkins and Bloomington Jefferson’s Cole Aldrich, now playing at Kansas.

Schilling has not made a college choice. His final list contains three schools: Division II power Winona State, Division II Augustana in Sioux Falls and Northwestern in Iowa, the NAIA school where brother Curt is playing.

Those colleges have offered free rides, as have such schools as North Dakota State, South Dakota State and Northern Iowa. Minnesota, Iowa State, Drake, Creighton and others have offered Schilling a walk-on spot with the possibility of a scholarship in the future.

A drawer in Cody’s bedroom is jammed with letters from colleges. On the day of the game against Mountain Lake/Butterfield-Odin, seven letters arrive in the mail from Drake, the No. 15 team in the nation.

"It would be better if they’d offer him a scholarship," Curt Schilling says.

Home and family are important factors in Cody Schilling’s college decision.

"Definitely," Curt says. "He has a lot of family here and around Sioux Falls, too."

Wherever Cody Schilling ends up playing college basketball, he will leave an impressive high school legacy behind.

The Minnesota boys’ career scoring record is 3,366 points, set by Braham’s Isaiah Dahlman before graduating in 2006. Next in line are Joel McDonald of Chisholm (3,292, graduated 1991), Jake Sullivan of Tartan (3,013, graduated 2000) and Schilling.

In order to break Dahlman’s record, Schilling needs to average a little less than 23 points per game, and that’s assuming the Panthers play three games at the state tournament. If they fall one game short of qualifying for state, he needs to average 28 points to get the record.

It looks like a safe bet either way, because his average this season is 29.

Schilling, who has scored in double figures in every game since the start of his freshman season, talked with Dahlman last summer during an AAU basketball event in the Twin Cities. Dahlman, now playing at Michigan State, made his mark on the Class 2A level at Braham.

He told Schilling: "Go for it. It would be great if small-town players were 1-2 [on the all-time list]."

"If it comes, it comes," Schilling said. "It would be sweet."

• • •

Saturday’s nonconference opponent is St. Mary’s High School from Remsen, Iowa, which is 75 miles away. Schilling is 31 points away from 3,000, and everybody knows it. At halftime he has 20, his team has 50 and the St. Mary’s Hawks have 17.

"That means the final score should be 100 to 34," Schilling tells his fired-up teammates in the locker room at halftime. "Keep it up!"

The outcome assured against an outmatched opponent, assistant coach Kellen tells the boys: "Don’t be cocky about it. Just do what you do and be dang proud."

Schilling’s first four baskets of the second half are all layups; he is fouled on one of them and makes the freebie, pushing his career total to 2,998. The Panthers lead 76-28 with less than seven minutes to play as Schilling takes a pass on the left wing.

Coach Okeson hollers, "Let it fly!" The kid fires from behind the three-point line, the ball swishes through the hoop and the little gym erupts. After being given the ball, Cody takes it to his parents in the stands. Hugs from Mom and Dad, more cheers from everybody, and the starters sit down for the day. The final score is 82-50.

Before the coaches enter the postgame locker room, there is no behind-the-scenes back-slapping. The starters are unhappy with the reserves, who played uninspired, sloppy basketball during their six-plus minutes on the court.

"Don’t ever take those minutes for granted," says Adam Van Der Stoep, remembering his time as a backup last season.

After the coaches enter, Okeson continues the theme. "Cherish those minutes. You need to play harder," he says. Then he reminds the players of Monday’s 7 a.m. practice. Before the boys return to the court for postgame congratulations, Schilling tells them, "When we go out there, all smiles."

That is indeed the case. Cody is hugged by his parents, grandparents, other relatives, neighbors, classmates and little kids. The girls’ players from St. Mary’s, standing in a cluster a few feet away, stare in jaw-dropped silence at the handsome young basketball star. If you didn’t know better, you’d think they were movie fans watching Brad Pitt on the red carpet.

Balloons appear out of nowhere, as does a plaque commemorating Cody’s 3,000th point. He poses for photos with his family, then the team gathers around him for more photos.

"I’m glad, that with all this Ellsworth support, I can give something back," he says.

Easy question: Would you trade all this — 3,000 points, the possibility of being the state’s boys’ career scoring leader — for another state title?

"There’s nothing like a state championship," he says with a grin. "We’ll celebrate tonight, forget about it, and then try to win another state championship."

Before long he’s back behind the wheel, driving through his quiet little town.

It makes you wonder: Where will the road take him?

We can’t wait to find out.