Bryce Schafer, Now at Creston, Has Panthers On the Rise

After building Worth County into a winning boys basketball program, Bryce Schafer left after last year’s Quarterfinal game to assume the head coaching job at Creston. Now, he is doing the same thing with the Panthers.

At Worth County, the Tigers got better every single year that Schafer was there. They won two games his first year, eight his second year, went 18-8 his third year, and went to the State Quarterfinals the last two years with records of 22-8 two years ago and 26-4 last year.

Now, Schafer hopes to replicate that at Creston. The Panthers got off to a bad start this year, digging themselves into a 2-7 hole. But then they found a breather when they won handily over Red Oak 60-26. Then, they played respectably against Denison-Schleswig, a powerhouse team, before losing 60-26. Their breakthrough came the next game, when they beat archrival Clarinda in an overtime game 62-60.

The Panthers fought their way back close to the .500 mark after that, and then faced Glenwood in Class 3A Substate. Glenwood was the defending state champion from last year, with a 14-8 record. They had lost handily to Glenwood 73-51 at the beginning of the year. But in the Substate game, the Panthers led wire to wire and won 66-57 despite frantic pressure from the defending champs. Creston shot 27 for 34 from the line in the win.

As quoted in the Creston News-Advertiser, Schafer said after the game, “Coming into it, I think it was proving to ourselves that we’re one of the big dogs. I think for a while you get that mentality that you’re mid-pack or low-pack and we need to have that mentality that we’re a big dog, and knocking off teams like Glenwood proves that.”

The Panthers had to play Denison-Schleswig, who was 16-4 at the time and a team with state title ambitions of their own, next. They had lost to them 71-57 in January, but gave them all they could handle before losing 47-43 and ending their season at 10-12.

And while everybody expected Worth County to rebuild, they surprised everyone with a run at the District Tournament Title this year. Current coach Mark Fletcher gave Schafer credit for giving him something to work with. “This is a very fundamentally sound team, and he did a good job with them,” said Fletcher before the season started.