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Walton’s senior leadership helps Falls to 7-0 start
Senior guard’s game
has helped Tigers
get off to a 7-0 start
By Brian Dzenis
Jaden Walton offers a lot to Newton Falls and and it’s a big reason why the Tigers are off to such a hot start.
It’s a far cry from where he was four years ago, according to both the senior guard and his coach, Roy Sembach. His offense was one-dimensional, a catch-and-shooter with defense that left something to be desired.
“I added a piece to my game as each year went on,” Walton said. “From my freshman year, I was just a shooter. Then I started dribbling and getting in the paint as a sophomore, and then in my junior year I started doing it all. In my senior year, I’m excelling at all of it.”
Newton Falls opened the season on a seven-game winning streak, with Walton surpassing the 1,000 career-points mark in Tuesday’s 58-42 win against Brookfield. He reached the milestone in the first half of that contest and finished with 25 points.
“It’s a great accomplishment that I thought I would never be able to reach,” Walton said. “As a little kid growing up, you want to reach that mark. You want to be one of those people that go down [in history] and it felt really good to reach it.”
Walton can now score both close to and away from the basket, but it’s his defense that earned praise from his coach.
“I don’t know if he’s underrated or not, because I don’t know what other people see when they watch him, but he’s a tremendous defensive player,” Sembach said on Friday. “He seems to have a real knack of finding where the ball is and at times, he just wrecks other teams’ offenses. He gets a lot of steals that other kids won’t get.”
Walton leads a group with limited varsity experience. Juniors Noah Suarez and Ben Simpson lettered last year coming off the bench and the rest of this year’s players are new to the varsity. But Suarez has fit in nicely as the second-leading scorer in the backcourt and the 6-foot-4 Simpson is one of the most improved players in the past few weeks, Sembach said. Simpson has scored in double figures in the team’s wins against Brookfield and Girard. Juniors Joey Urso and Vince Dragich can put up points off the bench. And finally, seniors Ben Koontz, Alex Ball and Allan Boone do not get as much playing time as their underclassmen counterparts, but to Sembach, they do the little things that help add up to a run that leaves him pleasantly surprised.
“I thought we’d be competitive —they’re a good group to work with— but I never thought we’d be off to this good of a start where we’re playing as well as we are,” Sembach said.
At this juncture last year, Newton Falls slumped to a 1-4 start, spending a portion of that season digging out of that hole and eventually finishing 16-8. The program prides itself on its 17 winning seasons in 18 years, including the current nine-year streak with a winning record.
“In our four years, this is the most intense group I’ve ever had,” Walton said. “From practices to games, we’re picking each other up. It’s a great team to be a part of.”
Newton Falls faces a tough test Tuesday on the road against rival LaBrae, a team Sembach considered to be among the favorites the All-American Conference Blue Tier, along with Champion. The Tigers downed Champion Friday with the help of Walton’s 36 points.
“We’ll find out how good we really are or how far we have to go,” Sembach said.