Dominican head boy’s basketball coach Steve Showalter looks to lead a youthful Knights squad to success. The former three-time state champion coach at Germantown currently has the Knights at 11-4 and in the thick of the Metro Classic Conference race.
Showalter is in his first season as head coach after former head coach Jim Gosz retired after five years. Showalter previously served as head coach at St. Augustine Prep and Menomonee Falls, each for two seasons after spending a season at Division 2 Lindenwood University. He coached at Germantown for 17 years and coached Warhawks to state tournament appearances in his last four years at the school.
“This is a great basketball job, we just have to get it back to where it needs to be,” Showalter said of taking over at Dominican.
Showalter says a lot of the success at Germantown was coaching his sons Zak and Jake and their friends. Growing up in different sports helped bring that success to the Germantown program. He would like to see a similar thing happen at Dominican.
“I just made for bigger classes and it made a difference when they got to high school. I would like to share that here,” Showalter said. “We need to have people coming in as freshmen that are ready to play. It is a smaller school as I am used to having 50 kids try out, here we have 20 kids trying out and that is a big change for me.”
Dominican has four players that average above 15 points per game led by Aaron Womack III, Derrick Johnson, Barry Applewhite, and Jaiden Martin. Womack leads the team with 264 points, while Applewhite averages a double-double every game.
“We have some shooters and have some guys that can put the ball in the hole, which makes it fun to coach and play because we share the ball with each other,” Showalter said of his team. “On one side it is fun and cool to see us play together. On the other side, we need more guys that can step up too.”
Racine St. Cat’s currently leads the way in the Metro Classic with an 8-1 conference record. Dominican currently sits in fourth behind Kenosha St. Joe’s and St. Thomas More with a 6-3 record in the conference.
“The top half is really good and even the bottom half is really good, and we have had struggles every game,” Showalter said of the conference. “I don’t know how our system is going to work with the teams that are physically tougher than us, but we have to find a way to prove it a little bit.”
After a matchup with Racine Prairie School on Jan. 28th, Dominican takes on two teams near the bottom of the conference next week against Burlington Catholic Central and Racine Lutheran as they play five of their last nine games at home the rest of the season.
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