Clear Fork Mini Colts taking show on the road to Dayton for girls basketball state tournament

BELLVILLE — There are plenty of things Clear Fork girls basketball coach Scott Sellers remembers about his high school playing days with the Colts.

Scoring 1,110 points, going 20-5 with a Division III district championship during his sophomore year in 1995-96 and making lifelong friends along the way. But there is one memory that stuck with him throughout the rest of his life and that was the honor of being a Clear Fork mini Colt.

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In the late 1980s and early 90s, then Clear Fork coach Kevin Calver started the Mini Colts program and Sellers was one of the first ones to try out. He was one of just four boys who were chosen and it still is one of the biggest honors of his life. Those four players played major roles for the 1995-96 district championship team when they got into high school.

So, when he took the job as the varsity girls coach at his alma mater, he wanted to make sure to revamp the program to help grow the love of basketball in the Valley. And it has blossomed into a major success. The 2023-24 Mini Colts, a group of 23 elementary-aged girls who perform a scripted routine at halftime of every girls home game, has been invited to perform their show at halftime of the Division II girls state semifinal game at 1 p.m. on Friday, March 15 at the University of Dayton.

The show consists of an array of ballhandling drills that are performed to music and finished off when some varsity players come back out of the halftime locker room and put the players through a defensive slid drill. Every movement is crisp and carefully planned and the entire state will get their chance to see it on the biggest stage.

The show caught the eye of Ohio High School Athletic Association Executive Director Doug Ute, also a Clear Fork grad, as he was watching a game at his alma mater against Pleasant where his granddaughter plays. He asked Sellers to bring his act on the road to Dayton and Sellers happily accepted the invite.

"Our goal is to provide something to get the kids to love the game at a young age," Sellers said. "More so than the skill development. The most important job I can do as a varsity-level coach is to work with these youth-level parents and coaches to give them everything they need to be successful which includes kids growing up wanting to be Kylie Belcher and Annika Labaki and want to just be around the game because I believe the best players in high school are the ones who like the game and the ones who end up being special are the ones who love the game. That is what we are trying to build more than ball handling and other skills."

Sellers hold open tryouts before every season putting the young ladies through a plethora of tests and drills and each player is scored and those who meet the minimum score get the honor of performing as Mini Colts. Sellers invites parents to attend the tryouts and the following practices and asked them to make a commitment to bring their kids to every varsity home game. So far, it has been 100% attendance.

The first year Sellers brought the program back, he had three meet the minimum score. The next year, he had nine and the following year, it jumped up to 21. This year, a record 23 met the score and take the court every night with the Clear Fork Colts varsity team.

And every little girl in the Valley wants to be a part of it.

"What has been the best thing is the girls work so hard in the summer leading up to that tryout because they want to be a part of this," Sellers said.

And who wouldn't? On Feb. 10, the Mini Colts were invited to perform their routine at halftime of the Ashland University Women's game and did so well, AU asked them to do it again for the Men's game that followed.

It was just a really cool experience," Sellers said. "The kids were nervous, but after that first performance, they were so excited and just really cool to see them go out and do that and do a great job."

It is a program that has the future of Clear Fork girls basketball looking extremely bright. The seventh-grade team had a memorable season and the youth-level teams hardly ever lose. When those players get up to high school, the love for the game will be there.

"I really believed in it," Sellers said. "It is an idea stolen from something I really enjoyed growing up where I put a new spin on it to create a new avenue to help kids improve while being around great, positive role models and that is where we are now."

And where it is going to go is limitless, but the next stop will be the University of Dayton and the high school girls state championships.

jfurr@gannett.com

740-244-9934

X: @JakeFurr11

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Clear Fork Mini Colts set to perform at state championships in Dayton