Game No. 500 for Hutchinson Community College women’s head basketball coach John Ontjes was business as usual.
His Blue Dragons routed by the Coffeyville Red Ravens 84-60 Saturday night at the Sports Arena, the team’s seventh win in a row since the start of the new year. It was also the same night Hutchinson Community College inducted its 2022 class to the Quarterback Club.
“I’ve been here in that many games, and it’s just neat to be a part of the program,” Ontjes said. “All the special teams, players, and the coaches that we’ve been a part of, it’s a great place to coach. We’ve had great tradition here, and we’ve won a lot of games in this arena. It’s pretty special.
“It tells you that you’ve got a lot of good players. That’s what it tells you, because without them, we would never be where we are when you’re talking about the success that our program has without great players.”
Since the holiday break, the Blue Dragons women’s basketball squad has received votes in the NJCAA national rankings. They will look to get into the rankings this week after winning four of their last eight games by 20 or more points. In that stretch is one blemish on the road at Seward County. However, the Hutchinson women meet Seward again Wednesday, Feb. 16 at the Sports Arena where they haven’t lost a home game all season.
“I just think it’s the more games that we’ve got under our belt,” Ontjes said. “We’ve improved defensively. We’ve become a better rebounding team, and we’ve just had more people stepping up and scoring the basketball. Our post position is giving us more production. It’s made the game just a little bit easier for us, scoring-wise. Defensively, we’ve just done a better job of defending the basketball and not having as many breakdowns.”
Hall of fame night
The five inductees were the 2001 Blue Dragons women’s cross country team, former soccer players Melissa Hetherington and Alicia Robinson, former baseball and football player Deron McCue, and former athletic director and basketball coach Randy Stange.
Hetherington and Robinson were announced by Hutchinson Community College sports information director Steve Carpenter as “two best blue dragon soccer players that ever turned out.” Robinson is a two-time Jayhawk conference offensive player of the year and was the program’s first two-time NJCAA All-American as she led the nation with 27 assists in 2011. She had 42 career assists, 24 career goals and 90 career points.
Hetherington was a prolific goal-scorer who had 66 in her career at Hutchinson, including 14 game-winners and nine hat-tricks. She holds the single-game record for goals with seven and 16 points. Hetherington is also the only player in the program’s history to have back-to-back 30-goal seasons, per Hutchinson Community College sports information.
McCue, the Nickerson High School head baseball coach and Hutchinson Monarchs skipper, played baseball and football at Hutchinson Community College where he was an all-conference baseball player with a career 0.374 batting average and 0.626 slugging percentage. McCue played for the Hutchinson Broncs, which led to him getting drafted by the San Francisco Giants.
Stange, a Nickerson graduate, played tennis at Hutchinson Community College. He took over the men’s head basketball coaching position and was 83-20 ​​in three seasons leading the Blue Dragons, including beating Butler for the Region VI championship in 1997.
Stange was also the Hutchinson Community College athletic director from 1997 to 2015.
The 2001 Hutchinson Blue Dragons women’s cross country won a national title after starting the year as the No. 1-ranked team in the NJCAA Div. III cross-country poll. That team had Pam Shelite, Lisa Volk, Ruth Limo, Jenny Shafer, Michelle Walker, Alissa Fischer, Dolly Sando, and Cassie Wolf along with eight other individuals that led the team to its greatest accomplishment, per Hutchinson Community College sports information.
Hutchinson men fall to defending champions Coffeyville
Saturday marked the first time this season the 13th-ranked Hutchinson Blue Dragons men’s basketball team lost back-to-back games this season, falling to last year’s national champion Coffeyville 86-71 at the Sports Arena.
The Hutchinson men are 18-5 overall, 12-5 in the Jayhawk conference and hit the road Wednesday headed for Dodge City for another potential top-25 matchup. Dodge City beat Hutchinson in the first meeting of the season 102-96 and are in first place in the conference.
Billy Watson is the sports reporter for The Hutchinson News and has been in Kansas since March 2021. To reach out about story ideas, you can send an email to wwatson@gannett.com or send a direct message on Twitter @hutchsports or @billywatson4l.