COLUMBUS — Fresh out of college, Jamie Kachmarik landed the dream entry-level job as a video coordinator for the Ohio State basketball program, and it only got better from there.
His second season, in 1999, the Buckeyes went to the Final Four.
Kachmarik — who previously worked as a student assistant under Jim Larranaga at Bowling Green — had a front-row seat as that out-of-nowhere team of Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd heisted the hearts of the state. The 23-year-old pinched himself every day.
“Unbelievable,” he said.
Kachmarik never imagined he could be part of another team so special.
He imagined wrong.
Two decades later, there he was Thursday, back at the Schottenstein Center — the home of the Buckeyes — and back in the Final Four, his career come full circle with a indomitable group of boys who elevated Cardinal Stritch to a historic perch.
Like with Ohio State in 1999, the season stopped short of a Hallmark ending, the Cardinals losing to Lutheran East 58-53 in a Division III semifinal.
But the ride was no less sweet.
After about the entire Cardinal Stritch student body of 300-plus teens stood from their seats behind the basket and roared as the players dejectedly left the court, Kachmarik called this season — whether it was beneath the brightest lights the former college assistant envisioned for himself or not — the most rewarding of his career.
“When I was here with Ohio State, we had an unbelievable team that was all about the team,” he said. “You had great leaders and our team was the same way. It’s really something how similar they are. They had Scoonie Penn and Michael Redd. We had Jordan [Burton] and Joey [Holifield] with Little [Anderson] as that third piece, which was Jason Singleton and George Reese at Ohio State. This was a great run.”
In one sense, the defeat was another stage-right exit for Toledo, our title drought for boys teams from the immediate area — defined for these purposes as Lucas or Wood County — reaching 29 years. (Scott won the big-school title in 1990.)
In another, it marked the continued — and inconceivable — arrival of Cardinal Stritch.
“We achieved something that nobody thought we could do,” Holifield said.
That’s not your usual teenage us-against-the-world boilerplate, either.
It’s the truth.
When Kachmarik returned to northwest Ohio in 2013 after a 16-year odyssey in Division I basketball — deciding to put his wife, Cori, and their young son and daughter ahead of his own aspirations — Cardinal Stritch seemed an unlikely spot for his second act.
The small Catholic school in Oregon had not won so much as a district title since the 1980s and never had won a conference championship, including in its two decades in the Toledo Area Athletic Conference.
But hoops is hoops, and Kachmarik embraced the opportunity.
“The first thing was just teaching the fundamentals,” he said. “People don’t understand that in college, you coach to make sure that every ‘t’ is crossed and ‘i’ is dotted. When I came in, just doing a right-handed layup jumping off the correct foot and laying it in with your right hand, that wasn’t happening. Our first couple workouts, we spent actually just taking one step and learning how to [imagine there is] a string on your elbow to your knee.”
Kachmarik’s first team won the district title in 2015, and the momentum built from there as basketball-playing students from both sides of the river began to take notice.
This year’s team blended college-level talent — led by the junior Holifield (who has offers from Toledo and Bowling Green among others) and seniors Anderson (who will attend prep school in New England) and Burton (Division II Notre Dame College) — good coaching, and a stubborn spirit, right to the end.
Cardinal Stritch (24-4) had no business winning its first-ever semifinal game.
Not against a Cleveland powerhouse coming off consecutive Final Four trips and with length everywhere. Not on a day the Cardinals shot 18-of-54 from the field.
Yet there they were to the end, cranking the vise of full-court pressure, to the point where a 14-point deficit late in the third quarter gave way to a potential game-tying 3-point attempt by sophomore Jhaiden Wilson in the dying seconds.
Cardinal Stritch should be proud.
Its coach sure is, the tearful end evoking another magical run from a past life.
Before a recent season, Kachmarik invited Penn to the school to talk to his players and the program’s supporters.
“I was showing all the old highlight films of that run in 1999,” he said. “Scoonie and I were watching it and we both got emotional, because it was so special. That team was so special. They were a brotherhood that was so tight, and that’s what we have up here.
“This is a season the kids will look back on and remember for the rest of their lives.”
First Published March 22, 2019, 12:33 a.m.
