High school boys basketball: For many at Marengo, IHSA tournament run is a family affair

Sometime in the past week, Carter Olson’s dad pulled out an old photo from when he won a regional title his senior year at Marengo.

Chad Olson is the current athletic director and a former varsity boys basketball coach at Marengo. He was a senior on the 1989-90 Indians team, Marengo’s last team to earn a trip to state.

After this year’s Indians won a regional title, Chad compared the photos from then and now.

“It’s pretty cool how they were alike,” said Carter Olson, a senior forward on this year’s team.

Carter has seen some of his dad’s memorabilia from the 1990 Class A state tournament run. That year the Indians reached state, then at Assembly Hall in Champaign, and lost to Prairie Central in the quarterfinals. They finished the year 28-3.

“Sometimes I go digging through stuff,” Carter Olson said. “One time I found his state basketball shirt and I started wearing it around the house, joking around with him.”

One more win and Carter can wear a state finals shirt of his own.

Marengo (25-7) will play Bloomington (25-4) in a Class 3A supersectional at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Northern Illinois University’s Convocation Center in DeKalb. The winner heads to Peoria for Friday’s state semifinals.

Olson isn’t the only Indians player with Marengo basketball in his blood. Five current players have a parent who played for either the Marengo boys or girls basketball programs.

Junior point guard Blaine Borhart’s dad, Jason, played at Marengo in the mid-1990s. He is the boys track coach at Jacobs now.

“Marengo basketball was just so much tradition and so much was expected of the teams every year,” Jason Borhart said. “The early 2000s kind of got away from that, but the last couple years have rekindled that in the school and the community. You can look up at banners and see that for a stretch there regionals were almost an every year occurrence.”

From 1978 to 1992, Marengo won 13 regionals in 15 seasons. Then the Indians won another four from 1996 to 2000. Most of those came under legendary coach Bill Barry.

The thing that stood out to Chad Olson about the 1990 run to the state quarterfinals was the way the town responded.

“Community members [were] consistently coming up and congratulating you when you were going out to breakfast,” he said. “You didn’t realize how many people were enjoying the run as much as you were.”

Olson feels that same spirit with his son’s senior squad. Marengo won its first regional title in 15 years in 2015 and now this year’s team has won the school’s first sectional since 1998.

“It’s so exciting,” Carter Olson said. “Not even just around school, sometimes just going around town.”

Carter Olson used to hang around the Indians teams when his dad was the coach from 2005 to 2010. Watching current coach Nate Wright’s young son, Chaz, hang around the team, he sometimes sees a younger version of himself.

Blaine Borhart said his two older sisters dragged him to Marengo games when he was younger. Mike Volkening, this season’s leading scorer, is following two older brothers who went through the Marengo program. He and his brothers also are following the footsteps of their mother, Melinda Volkening, who played for the Indians girls team in the mid-1980s.

Junior guard Matt Fischer’s dad, Mike Fischer, played in the late 1980s, overlapping one year with Chad Olson. John Henning’s mother, Sue Martin, also played for the girls program.

“It’s kind of a driving force that we want to play up to their expectations almost,” Mike Volkening said. “We want to accomplish the same things, if not better.”

For the current players, the 1980s and ‘90s are ancient history. These guys are just trying to make a legacy for themselves.

“There’s never been anything like this since we’ve been alive in Marengo,” Blaine Borhart said. “It’s a fun experience for us and the whole school.”