ST. JOHN — It’s 11 p.m. on a Friday night, and Joe Huppenthal still isn’t home.
“Where are you?” his wife, Shannon Huppenthal, asks over text.
“Leaving now,” Joe Huppenthal replies from his office. The Lake Central Indians finished winning a game more than two hours ago. Their coach is still watching film.
Half an hour passes.
“You haven’t left yet,” Shannon Huppenthal messages back. She can track his location from her phone. Her husband is in the same spot in the same gym watching the same clips.
A little reluctantly, Joe Huppenthal eventually packs away his things.
“He’s obsessive,” Shannon Huppenthal says.
Joe Huppenthal — The Times Coach of the Year for a second consecutive season — isn’t motivated by wins. His Indians picked up 23 of those on their way to a Final Four appearance and Duneland Athletic Conference championship.
He’s driven by the losses.
“It’s a sick feeling,” Joe Huppenthal says. “I hate to lose at anything. I hate to lose at checkers. What’s good about losing? Seriously? If someone can come up with anything, let me know.”
Joe Huppenthal’s fear of failure leads to an obsession with preparation. He spends late nights tucked away in his office watching highlights. He falls asleep in bed with an iPad still replaying the same sets future opponents will run with the sound on. A typical winter date night with his wife is spent scouting.
Joe Huppenthal can’t dictate the level of talent that enters his program. He can develop it, but not control it.
What he can control is whether or not his players are prepared. For that, he sacrifices.
Coach Joe Huppenthal watches players during practice at Lake Central in October 2022.
“It’s hard to explain this to somebody because they think you’re crazy,” Joe Huppenthal said. “It’s just high school basketball, right? No. Not to me. It’s more than that.”
Building a winning basketball team is a process. Joe Huppenthal asks his players to trust it.
That journey starts with him believing in himself. He can’t get his kids to buy in until he has.
Then he challenges them.
“(Huppenthal) keeps us humble,” junior Aniyah Bishop said. “He reminds us anything can happen at any given time. He works so hard to make sure that we’re prepared for anything. He works so hard at that.”
Lake Central entered the 2022-23 season with a target on its back. The Indians were ranked highest among local Class 4A teams after Crown Point graduated a pair of Indiana All-Stars in Jessica Carrothers and Lilly Stoddard, who anchored a 103-7 run over their prep careers that included four DAC titles, four sectional wins, two seasons ending in semistate and a 2021 state title.
Lake Central came closest among local teams to knocking off Crown Point last year, first losing in overtime during the regular season, and then contesting, but ultimately not having enough firepower in a regional championship game.
Carrothers and Stoddard’s departure left the door open for Lake Central to slot in as the area’s team to beat. With that came the added pressure of expectations.
“Until you’ve gone through something like that, it’s hard to explain how difficult that is,” Joe Huppenthal said.
Joe Huppenthal said he envied the way Crown Point coach Chris Seibert dealt with the constant pressure of being the Region’s top program for four consecutive years. He’s tried to follow the same blueprint Seibert used.
“Until you’re going through it it’s just a different world, right?” Seibert said. “As a coach, it’s a wonderful thing to have a run like that and thinking back on it even now, it’s like, ‘Wow, how awesome was that?’ But it’s like surviving until that next game and trying not to lose.”
Pressure is privilege, Seibert is fond of saying.
“You want that pressure because that means there’s expectation,” Seibert said. “That means your program is in a good place. But it also means you’re going to get every other team's best shot every game you play, and I think Hup and his staff have done a tremendous job of keeping their kids focused and grounded.”
Lake Central head coach Joe Huppenthal watches with Riley Milausnic, Vanessa Wimberly, Aniyah Bishop and Kennedie Burks as the clock ticks down on their win over Northridge during the Class 4A regional Feb. 11 at LaPorte High School.
The pressure on Lake Central isn’t going away. The Indians didn’t roster a senior but put four starters on the All-DAC team — Bishop, junior Riley Milausnic, sophomore Ayla Krygier and sophomore Vanessa Wimberly — while their fifth, junior Nadia Clayton, was both the team’s most improved and premier defender.
Those five all averaged between Clayton’s 7.2 points and Bishop’s 9.7 points per game. Their balance, Joe Huppenthal said, was their greatest strength. Any of those five could go average twice as many points on a weaker team, he said, but Lake Central’s program has been built around putting egos aside for the greater good of the team.
“We come here after school, get in the gym and work on ourselves,” Krygier said. “We stay focused. We stay as a team. We stay as a family. We just make sure we’re ready for the next opponent, whoever that may be, and then we go do our thing.”
Lake Central’s next opponent is still seven months away. The weeks after the end of the season allowed Joe Huppenthal time to decompress. He said it felt like two or three bricks were lifted off his chest when the season ended.
Three weeks after losing in semistate, he’d already reviewed most of their loss to Fishers. He lamented a few too many missed shots and tired legs hanging over from their semifinal win against No. 1 South Bend Washington in the morning.
He still hadn’t watched that win.
“For him, really, I don’t think it’s even about winning or losing,” Shannon Huppenthal said. “He just doesn’t want to let those girls down.”
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