‘The Time Has Come’ for state-bound Serena Huskers inspired by Joan Jobst

Every great athletic accomplishment has a motivating factor behind it.

For professional athletes, it’s usually money. For college ones, it could be a national ranking. For high schoolers, it’s more likely to be something less obvious, such as beating a rival or winning a conference title.

For Katie Baker, the Serena girls basketball team and its head coach, Jim Jobst, the inspiration for what they accomplished Monday night had nothing to do with any of those.

Instead, it came from a petite, seemingly elderly lady sitting in the third row of the Serena High School bleachers opposite the Huskers’ bench, dressed in a black hat, black mask and a white fleece hoodie to keep her frail body warm against the evening’s chill.

That inspiration is Joan Jobst.

The only recently retired educator, administrator and coach at St. Bede Academy, Marquette Academy and Ottawa High School, whose courageous and tenacious fight against cancer has inspired her hometown Huskers from the first practice through their record-breaking season to the apex, a 46-34 Class 1A Serena Supersectional victory over Ridgeview.

But don’t think that she and the Huskers are done, not by a long shot. Now it’s on to the state finals Thursday at Normal’s Redbird Arena ... and rest assured, the inspiration will be on hand for every second.

“Joan means absolutely everything to this team,” said Baker, the Huskers’ only senior and Class 1A All-State candidate who paced Monday’s victory with a game-best 18 points and seven steals. “I can’t speak for everyone else, but I’m pretty sure everyone on this team feels exactly the same way I do. She’s never left my thoughts this entire season.

“It’s sad what’s going on with her health, but this [supersectional plaque] will be something she can remember always. I wanted this for her. This is all for her. All of it. All for her.”

“This is all so gratifying,” Joan Jobst said. “I remember when they were freshmen playing JV, and things weren’t going well. I told them to hang in there, you’re going to be good, it’s going to count, and they would look at me dumbfounded, but said, ‘Thank you very much.’

“Now I think they’re realizing what I meant, and though I’ve been a little panic-stricken when the pressure was building at times, they always come through, and they came through again tonight.

“Still, never in my wildest imagination would I have thought these girls would get 32 wins. This is a special group. … I’m so proud of them, of Jim, and I’m super proud to see the spirit come out in this Serena community. This is my alma mater, and it’s really great to see all these people here.”

There was a time in July when it looked as if Joan Jobst may not see a moment of this season, when her pancreatic cancer was getting the best of her and had reached stage 4, at which point, she said, “I don’t think they ever expected me to leave the hospital.”

However, calling on the toughness she’s always preached to the athletic teams she coached, she rallied through rounds of chemotherapy, and by the time basketball season was about to start, she was ready to not only attend the Huskers’ games, but even give the girls motivational pep talks on occasion.

It was a mutual inspiration, Jim Jobst said, when Baker got his OK to get everyone on the team special wristbands with the initials “JJ” embroidered on them. Next she came up with the idea for the T-shirts that the team and Serena fan base have been wearing – on the back underneath her initials “JJ” is the slogan “The Time Has Come.”

Now, those shirts can be found at every Huskers game, including the 85%-90% of all games, home and road, she has attended.

“It’s really been an inspiration drawn both ways,” Jim Jobst said. “It’s a lift when you’re tired or when the game is close, it helps you to dig down a little deeper maybe and find an extra gear, seeing her up there … and of course it’s an inspiration for me, too. She’s been coming to my games since I was 6 years old, and it’s always a great comfort to see her there.

“It’s been great the way the girls and my mom have connected.”

Said Baker, “Looking up in the stands and seeing her there kind of calms me down, because I know that she’s there for us and is proud of us no matter what. She’s been there for me since my freshman year when I hardly knew her. She and [her husband, Mike] are like another set of grandparents for me. She’s awesome … and now we have to keep going for her this weekend.”