Bob Lutz: Hoxie’s winning streak rolls on like a truck on a highway

The Hoxie girls basketball team hasn’t lost a game since December 2011. The winning streak is at 103 now after an 8-0 start this season, and wins are becoming as predictable as the sunrise.

There are 1,200 residents of Hoxie, in northwest Kansas, and there isn’t one of them who doesn’t follow this team with excitement. And perhaps a little nervousness. The streak will end sometime. When? WHEN!?!?

“This community is so awesome,” said senior guard Terran Hoyt, daughter of veteran coach Shelly Hoyt, who is averaging a team-high 18 points. “No matter where I go, someone is telling me that I did a good job in a game. I don’t always know the people but they know my stats. This community gives us so much support.”

Hoxie’s winning streak is 12 games longer than the one Little River put together from 1995-98, the one everyone thought would never be broken. Word of Life was the last team to beat Hoxie, in the Castle Rock tournament in Quinter more than four years ago.

Speaking of Castle Rock, Hoxie, which plays at Oberlin on Friday night, nearly had another tough experience there last month. After Hoxie jumped to an 18-2 lead, Dighton fought back to tie the game headed into the fourth quarter. Hoxie eventually won 48-45, but not without a scare.

“During the game I walked over to my mom and she was asking me about what play we were running,” Tarren Hoyt said. “I stopped, looked at her and said, ‘Mom, I’m really scared.’ She said, ‘You are?’ and I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said everything was going to be OK, and it was.”

But it was close, the closest call the Indians have had in a while. They breezed through the Class 1A-Division I tournament last year, beating LaCrosse (71-43), Centre (64-37) and Centralia (67-53) for a fourth consecutive championship.

The winning streak has a life of its own, but it’s one Shelly Hoyt ignores.

“I don’t think about it,” she said.

As proof, she had to think for a minute, and count out loud, when asked how many games the winning streak had reached.

“I don’t even care, to be honest with you,” Hoyt said. “Everybody wants to just see this success and I had a guy ask me something about it last year and he’s like, ‘Aren’t you just incredibly excited about it?’ Well, if you knew what has gone into this, you would know why it’s not that big of a deal. Everybody wants to look at this streak as this elaborate, fun, beautiful thing. It’s not, really. It’s dirty, hard work. That’s what I’ve seen.”

Hoyt grew up in Venango, Neb., small like Hoxie, and played basketball at Hastings College. One of her four daughters, all of whom have played for her at Hoxie, is Jacie Hoyt-Capra, now an assistant at Kansas State.

“When I got here, girls basketball was not a big thing,” Shelly Hoyt said. “And it was very frustrating to me. If you know anything about Hoxie, you know it’s all about wrestling. So I told those girls that it was awesome that wrestling puts Hoxie’s name out there, but why can’t it be you? Why can’t it be us?”

Hoxie has had only two losing seasons during Hoyt’s tenure and one was her first season. She also coaches the junior high team, which lost its first game in six years last year and is unbeaten this season.

“My mom is one of the most amazing people,” Terran Hoyt said. “Whenever we’re at home, there is not a single second that she is not working on basketball. She’s either working up new drills or reading a book about coaching or something else. When we go to other games, she has to talk to the coaches and get information. She never stops trying to learn. It’s definitely her passion.”

That passion has permeated throughout Hoxie. Werstling is and always will be big, but girls basketball has moved to the front seat, too. You get people’s attention with 103 consecutive wins.

“It’s a lot of pressure,” said senior guard Serena McCown, who moved to Hoxie from Pueblo, Colo., before her junior year. “But I think we’re handling it pretty well. I try to work as hard as I can to win and try not to focus just on the streak.”

But the streak is there, ready to topple. Each win gives it more weight, making it harder to sustain.

Shelly Hoyt, 294-58 at Hoxie, said her players have experienced plenty of losing. She makes sure of it by taking them to tournaments all over — Oklahoma, Texas, Nevada — during the summer.

“People talk about this winning streak and how these kids have never gotten beat, but they’ve been beaten,” Hoyt said. “Just not here.”

Good players have graduated, yet others step up. Point guard Carly Heim, the glue to the past three Hoxie teams, is at Fort Hays State now.

“When you lose a point guard,” Hoyt said, “that takes so much away. We relied so much on Carly and this group is learning that we have to rely on each other.”

The beat goes on. The streak goes on. There’s a beat to this streak and it’s one to which you can tap your fingers.

This story was originally published January 14, 2016 at 2:41 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Hoxie’s winning streak rolls on like a truck on a highway."