Ex-Geneva star Stephanie Hart, former Burlington Central standout Kathryn Schmidt excelling in new roles for young Lewis team

When more than half of your team is out of commission, it’s time to improvise.

So Sam Quigley Smith laced up her high-tops.

She asked her assistant coaches to do the same.

With a few extra bodies, albeit slightly older and perhaps slightly rustier bodies, the Lewis University women’s basketball team actually could have somewhat of a normal practice.

“We had no choice. We were down to seven players in practice and we had a game in five days,” said Smith, the head coach at Lewis and a former star guard at DePaul, while laughing about the coaches dusting off their games.

“We had to get some 5-on-5 in. I was about to go grab the assistant coaches from the men’s basketball team, too.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a monkey wrench into almost everything, and trying to field a healthy basketball team is no exception.

The Lewis women’s basketball players all were quarantined for 14 days in the beginning of October to establish a baseline. Shortly after they came out of that quarantine, nine of the 16 players on the roster contracted COVID-19 and had to go back into quarantine for another 14 days.

That left the Flyers woefully short-handed with the beginning of the season right around the corner. So while coaches were filling in at practice, players such as Stephanie Hart from Geneva and Kathryn Schmidt from Burlington Central were being asked to step up in ways that were somewhat unexpected.

Hart, a junior who started her college career playing point guard, was moved to the post.

Schmidt, a freshman, was thrust into the starting lineup just weeks after stepping onto campus. Two other freshmen and a sophomore also were in the starting lineup.

The young, improvising Flyers, who finally are fully healthy and wear masks not only in practices but also in games as an added precaution, have started the season with a 3-2 record, with two wins over Quincy and a victory over Indianapolis. The players also undergo daily screenings and test weekly for COVID-19.

“We have a lot of guards and we lost a lot of bigs, so I figured I needed to do whatever I needed to do to play and help the team,” said Hart, who twice hit buzzer-beating shots as Geneva won back-to-back state championships in 2017 and 2018, her junior and senior years. “I joke because I haven’t played in the post since [the feeder program] when I was the tallest kid on the team. Since then, I’ve always been a guard, and I miss being the person who gets to set our plays up and get people in order as a point guard. But I kind of like playing different positions. And I like being able to rebound and focus on something that is really important to our team. As a point guard, I wasn’t rebounding as much. I like rebounding.”

Hart, who started the first four games but is temporarily sidelined while recovering from an elbow injury, has been holding her own on the boards. She is just 5-foot-8 but said she plays taller and her long arms give her some deceptive length that helps in the paint with rebounding and interior defense. In addition to averaging 8.8 points per game, she’s pulling down 3.3 rebounds per game and has two blocks on the season.

The 6-foot Schmidt leads the team in rebounding at 7.8 per game. To her pleasant surprise, the freshman is second on the team in scoring at 12 points per game.

“Obviously, this is very different from high school. It’s faster and way more aggressive and you’re playing tougher competition,” Schmidt said. “But coach and the older players like Steph have made it easier to adjust even with the [COVID-19] circumstances. There’s been a lot to learn and they’ve helped a lot. I’m focused on rebounding and just doing the little things to help us win.”

Both Hart and Schmidt are convinced that Lewis has a lot more wins coming in the future.

“We are so young that I think we are capable of more than we even know,” Hart said. “I think we have the chance to make it far.”

The freshman class could be the strongest recruiting class of Smith’s three-year tenure at Lewis.

Freshman guard Jenna Badali from Mother McAuley leads the team in scoring at 12.4 points per game. Taylor Gugliuzza, a freshman from Lincoln-Way West, has started every game and is third in scoring at 11.4 points per game.

Smith believes Lewis has the potential to contend for a Division II national championship someday and that this group sets a good foundation.

“I’m so excited,” Schmidt said. “We have so much talent on our roster and we are improving so much from game to game. I think we do have the potential to go far.”