Wortman makes lasting impact on program

Germantown — Will Eliza Wortman be to Germantown girls basketball what Ben Averkamp was to the boys team?

Only time will tell if the two-time NOW All-Suburban selection, all-time Germantown leading scorer and now University of Indianapolis recruit will have the kind of impact Averkamp clearly has had on the still successful boys squad, but first-year Warhawks girls coach Matt Stuve already likes the trends.

"There are some similarities to that phenomenon (of Averkamp a two-time NOW Player of the Year)," Stuve said. "She (Wortman) led the program to never seen before levels of success, and then she went out and set a standard for success on an individual level.

"We'll be hard-pressed to see someone match her stats in the near future, but it would be nice to parlay her achievements into some long-term success for the program. You'd like to think that a player of that stature could get more kids interested and excited about Germantown (girls) basketball."

Setting the standard

As for Wortman herself, she's stunned at the prospect of being the model for the future of the program.

"It is cool," she said. "When I was a freshman, I didn't think of breaking any records, but it is exciting. And I really enjoyed watching the freshmen come along as a team this season (they went 17-3). It brought back fun memories for me when I was a freshman.

"And they JV (which went 14-8), they improved so much from the beginning of the season to the end."

Sounds like someone ready to be an example.

But then again, Wortman was ready to do that from day one. She lost out on several games at the end of junior year due to a leg injury (she would have surely scored more than 1,000 points for her career had that not happened, finishing with 949), but as soon as she was healthy, she joined with other senior leaders like point guard Melissa Klemm and shooting guard Rachel Hoft for some serious off-season training.

"It just didn't end well for us last year," she said, "but we were all excited because we thought we had some high expectations for ourselves. We knew we had the talent to do something."

And they did, including an 8-0 start and a school best overall record of 18-6 including a runner-up finish in the North Shore Conference. This included an 8-4 mark after Klemm, the leader of the offense, went down midway through the season after injuring the same knee that took her out of most of last season.

"We knew we couldn't let her down," Wortman said.

Scoring picks up after Klemm injury

And they didn't, as Stuve rotated other guards into the point slot, and Wortman lifted her game to pick up the offensive slack for the high-scoring Warhawks.

"Eliza just responded," Stuve said. "Her field goal percentage went up in the second half of the season and so did her scoring."

Her best scoring game came against two-time league champion Nicolet, against which she put in 29 points, by far the most anyone scored against the 20-2 Knights this season.

The end result was a school single-season scoring record of 394 points which included marks for both field goals and free throws in a season.

And like Averkamp, Wortman served as an effective last option defensively, using her lanky 6-2 frame and innate sense of timing to block a school record 113 shots this season (the next highest on the team had 17).

"She is just a difficult matchup," said Whitefish Bay coach Greg Capper. "Anybody you put on her, taller and stronger or shorter and quicker, she will find a way to score on them. She is just one who hates to lose. She's definitely a warrior, which is what you find in the best of players.

"Eliza is someone you definitely want on your team."

Wortman definitely thought Stuve had a positive impact on her game.

"He really worked hard with me on my inside game," said Wortman. "Before this, I was more of an outside type of player. It's a lot better, but I'm still working on it."

And Wortman will get plenty of opportunity to put in that work when she goes to Indianapolis next fall. The NCAA Division II school recently won the Great Lakes Valley Conference championship and finished its season at 26-4. She believes that she'll get plenty of post practice there, because one of the assistants for the Greyhounds is 7-3.

"They're really excited to work with me in that regard," she said.

But she'll miss the excitement and camaraderie that was created this season.

"At the banquet (last week) coach had all of us (seniors) give a little speech, and I just talked about how really close we were this season," she said. "All teams say they're close, but we really were. We'd play for six days a week and then we'd hang out together on the day off."

Wortman sets a standard

Becomes second two-time Germantown girls All-Suburban selection

All-time Germantown All-Suburban selections

2010 - Eliza Wortman, forward

2009 - Wortman, forward

2000 - Casey McMahon, forward

1999 - McMahon, forward

1997 - Laura Krause, forward

1992 - Erika Freiburger, guard

QUOTE: "She just improved in so many aspects, and it's a very good sign when you're best player works just as hard or harder than anyone else did."

- Coach Matt Stuve, on Wortman

→ Girls All-Suburban Team: Profiles of the players. Page 24