The text pings Dan Feeney’s iPhone 13 after every Chaminade basketball loss the last few years.
Sometimes before the head coach of the Flyers even reaches home from the gym, he’ll get a message from the same player.
It’s always Ricky Gunther, and Gunther is always asking the same thing:
“What can I do better to help the team win?” Or “how can I get us where we need to go?”
“The kid never, ever, ever asks about getting more minutes or complains or anything,” Feeney said. “Most kids are wanting to know what they need to do to play more. Ricky is completely, completely unselfish. All he cares about is winning. I wish every kid was like him.”
Gunther, a senior guard, has always been a team player. Maybe that comes from being the youngest of eight (count ’em) eight children.
Only one of his siblings (Teresa, Anna, Maggie, Anthony, Regina, Helena and Catherine, if you’re scoring at home) is a boy, so Gunther grew up learning that sharing and team play is crucial to any success.
“Every single person in my family is competitive by nature, in board games or anything we do,” he said. “But it’s always been in a good way. And my sisters always showed me the right way to do things.”
On the basketball court, Gunther’s been doing things the right way at Chaminade for years. The only three-year player currently on varsity, Gunther was a key starter on last year’s state championship Flyers team, the first CHSAA state crown for the school since 2003.
In the epic double overtime championship game win over Buffalo’s Bishop Timon-St. Jude High School, it was the 6-foot Gunther’s three-pointer from the right side that tied the game at 77 with 21 seconds left in the first overtime, keeping Chaminade alive.
“I blocked out everything else and just took the shot,” recalled Gunther, who poured in 22 points in the final. He averaged 12.6 points per game last season.
This year, with the only other returning starter being sophomore Kyle Dillon, Gunther has taken on the lead scoring role. Through nine games so far he’s averaging 16.7 points and 3.8 assists per game, with a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio.
Since Christmas he’s really come into his own; driving mostly into the paint and rarely taking 3’s, the throwback scorer has 22.5 points per game in the last seven.
“He’s really embraced being a leader and he’s a guy everyone looks to,” Dillon said. “And some of the shots he hits, I don’t know he does it. He goes into the lane and just improvises, I don’t know he gets the ball to go in but he does.”
Gunther credits his post-practice work with Dillon every day as a big reason for his improvement.
“Just a lot of time spent looking to score early (in a possession) and be aggressive,” Gunther said. “I’m just reading what the defense gives me and trying to score any way I can.”
Gunther isn’t naturally comfortable being a vocal leader; Feeney constantly has to implore him to be louder on the court.
“A lot of times that’s what I tell him when he texts me, that he just needs to communicate more and be more assertive,” Feeney said. “He’s come a long way in that area, especially lately.”
As Gunther adjusts to a new role, he and Dillon know that this team is totally different from last year’s state title winning team; still, they’re 6-3 and should be a contender to go far in the CHSAA playoffs again this year.
