Berth in District 3 Tournament hardly a surprise for Tigers

Fleetwood hadn’t been in the District 3 boys basketball tournament since 2000, but Tigers coach Terry Sitler knew it was only a matter of time until that drought ended.

He realized it three years ago when he saw Jake Karnish, Aiden Soumas and Nate Herb playing together on an undefeated middle school team.

“We knew we had something special coming up,” Sitler said.

It all came to fruition this season when the Tigers won their first seven games, captured their first division title in decades and qualified as the No 13 seed in Class 5A. They’ll play at No. 4 Hershey Monday at 7.

Fleetwood will be one of seven Berks boys teams opening district play Monday, along with Exeter in Class 5A, Wyomissing and Oley Valley in Class 4A, and Kutztown, Brandywine Heights and Tulpehocken in Class 3A.

Wilson and Muhlenberg get underway Tuesday in Class 6A. Berks Catholic earned a first-round bye in Class 4A and opens Thursday; Reading High earned a first-round bye in Class 6A and opens Friday.

Finally cracking the district field came as no great surprise for the Tigers. Karnish, Souman, Herb and Will Ryan returned from a team that went 11-8 last season. When the district field became official a week ago there was no great celebration.

“We sort of knew as the season went on we were gonna make it,” Sitler said. “They knew that if we came out and took care of business, we would be playing on the 21st of February. When the official brackets (came out), it was more a sigh of relief. It would’ve been much more of a let down had we not made it.”

The Tigers have gone 16-6, recording their most wins since 1990 when they went 18-9 and won a district championship. Karnish, a junior wing, averages 17.5 points and has emerged as one of the league’s top players. He can get up on the boards or drain a 3; he leads the team with 25 3-pointers.

Soumas, a sophomore guard, averages 10.1 points. Herb, the point guard, averages 8.2 points. Ryan, a 6-4 senior center, averages 9.3 points.

They have played together for a long time and expected to succeed at this level. Sitler, who credits his junior high and high school staff for the successful rebuilding project, says this group began to show promise and win tournaments when they were fourth-graders.

The current sophomore class — Soumas, Herb, Liam Hilburt and Hunter Svoboda, along with Mason Misitano, who did not play this season but is expected to return next year– have been together since elementary school. They piqued Sitler’s interest and he has followed them closely since then.

Sitler knew when he took the Tigers’ head coaching job in 2012 that a major rebuilding job was required. The team had won just three games in each of the two previous seasons. He understood it had to start from the ground up.

“We knew it was going to be a lot of work,” he said. “We knew we were going to take our lumps early. We (concentrated) on working with the youth (leagues), and at the middle school, trying to change the culture.”

Fleetwood has had championship basketball teams before – there was a PIAA championship in 1957, and four district titles, the last in 1990 — but that’s ancient history. Over the past two decades the Tigers hadn’t qualified for the playoffs at any level.

Now they find themselves one win away from returning to the PIAA Tournament for the first time since 1990.

If the Tigers win their opener against the Trojans (17-5) they’ll earn one of nine District 3 berths for the state tournament. If they lose their opener they’ll go into a playback round with seven other teams, competing for that final state berth. They’ll need to win three straight games to qualify.

The opener will be a tough one. Hershey has a veteran team with length and played a rugged schedule. It played 13 games against District 3 qualifiers and won nine of them. It beat Mid-Penn Keystone rival Palmyra, the No. 5 seed in Class 5A, twice in the regular season. It also knocked off Cumberland Valley, the No. 2 seed in Class 6A. Two of its losses came to Mid-Penn Conference champion Cedar Cliff.

“We know we’re gonna have our work cut out for us,” Sitler said. “(Playing top competition) lets our guys know where we are and that we still have a ways to go. We can’t be happy (just to make the tournament). Being there is not enough now. It may have been enough last year, it’s not now.”