These Warriors have come a long way from 0-26

Westminster Christian senior basketball players Joel Benson and Tyler Beachler can smile about it now.

But it was no laughing matter three years ago when the boys, along with fellow freshman starter Ben Palmer, were getting their collective hats handed to them on a nightly basis.

Benson, Beachler and Palmer were freshmen playing varsity boys basketball out of necessity during the 2004-05 season.

Benson is now a 6-foot-5, 220-pound scoring machine who averages 18.6 points per game and is committed to play college ball for North Park University. Three years ago he was just a skinny, 6-2, 165-pounder.

The overmatched, freshmen-laden Warriors finished that season 0-26.

The low point?

Pick one.

There was a 37-point loss to Hampshire, a 38-point loss to Richmond-Burton, a 41-point loss to Illiana Christian and a 51-point loss to Chicago Christian (88-37).

"After a while when you've gone 0-12, 0-13, you wonder if you actually want to come out of the locker room just to get pounded," Beachler recalled this week. "That's what it was like every game -- just walking out and getting our butts beat. It got frustrating, but we still wanted to play. We still tried to work hard."

The loss that took the cake, however, was a 76-21 beating in Elmhurst administered by Private School League power, Timothy Christian, which dunked on the Warriors twice in that game.

"It was just a grind every game to go out knowing you're going to lose," said Palmer, who, due to a back issue, was forced to give up basketball as a junior to preserve himself for the baseball season. A star pitcher who led the Warriors to the Class A Elite Eight last spring, Palmer committed in the fall to throw for Division-I Dallas Baptist University on scholarship.

"You knew you weren't good enough to compete with all these teams that were so much bigger than you and so much stronger than you," Palmer added. "We just had to keep in mind that we were freshmen playing varsity. We had to keep in mind that the future was brighter."

Westminster's narrowest defeat on Jan. 21, 2005, was its most excruciating.

The Warriors led the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy by a point with nine seconds to play in Aurora, but a player for IMSA grabbed the inbounds pass, drove the length of the court and scored to beat Westminster 44-43 at the buzzer, dropping the Warriors to 0-17.

"He hit a floater over me, I think, and swished it," Benson said with a sigh.

The Warriors committed 30 turnovers in losing their 26th and final game that season to Genoa-Kingston in a Class A regional playoff contest at Hampshire.

Afterward, then-coach Dale Kruse said: "The things that were our demise in games this year are fixable things that will come with experience and the dedication and commitment to making themselves better. I think we have the tools and pieces to compete, unfortunately those tools were just young."

Kruse was right, and the three freshmen kept things in perspective, believing their time would eventually come.

"(Giving up) never came to mind," Benson said. "I just figured the next year would be a little bit better, and the next year a little bit better than that."

The players had reason for optimism. Along with classmate Cory Hodge, who was a member of the JV team that finished 1-25 that season, the eventual Class of 2008 had gone 15-0 as fifth graders and 14-1 as sixth graders.

The talent was there but, as freshmen, the players were constantly overmatched against taller, stronger teams.

Coach Bruce Firchau was hired to take over for Kruse the following season, and the Warriors began the slow climb back to respectability as the boys matured.

When Beachler, Benson and Palmer were sophomores in Firchau's first season, the team finished 5-21.

Last year they took a giant step forward by finishing 16-10.

Now that Beachler, Benson and Hodge are seniors, the Warriors have been gaining newfound respect by beating the teams that formerly pounded on them like angry older brothers.

The Warriors prevailed by 6 points at Illiana Christian on Dec. 7, defeated Chicago Christian twice and made amends for the worst defeat of their freshman year by beating Timothy Christian 53-35 on Dec. 14.

"That's a gi-normous turnaround," Beachler said. "I don't even want to do the math on that one."

Let me help you out, Tyler. That's a 73-point turnaround against Timothy in four years.

These Warriors had already set a new school record with 18 wins heading into Wednesday night's game at Walther Lutheran. Next week they will begin what they hope will be a deep incursion into the first Class 1A playoffs in state history.

Though finishing 0-26 seems like forever ago, the players credit the experience for making them into the team they've become.

"I think I'm happy it happened because it taught us to roll with the punches a little bit," Benson said. "If we get into a close game and a team hits a 3-pointer to go ahead, well, we've been there before. It's nothing new. So, it gives us a little extra confidence to finish out games."

Unfortunately, win or lose, this team's days are numbered.

It will be difficult for Firchau to say goodbye to a group he has watched grow from a tiny acorn into a mighty oak within Class 1A.

"This is one of my all-time favorite groups," said Firchau, an IBCA Hall-of-Famer who guided Harvard to a state semifinal in 1985. "This is a group I admire greatly. I'm a very demanding coach, and they've always wanted to be coached. They seem to have just soaked it up as a sponge."

Any advice to the younger teams out there taking it on the chin this season, guys?

"It was definitely hard for us to go out there and get pounded, get beaten up all the time," Beachler said. "But we didn't let it define us. Don't ever let losing define you."

Losing never did define Beachler, Benson and the rest of the Warriors.

Now it's their turn to smile.

jfitzpatrick@dailyherald.com