O’Brien: Harvest Christian emerging as Class 1A power

Harvest Christian is a small school in Elgin. It’s just six years old and has 179 students. The Lions play in the Northeastern Athletic Conference and it is safe to say that most basketball fans in the area have never heard a thing about them.

That started to change a little this summer, when former Zion-Benton star Andre White was hired as basketball coach.

“When I first walked into the gym I looked up and there wasn’t one basketball banner,” White said. “It’s a unique situation. Last year they won eight games in the whole season.”

White’s son, Andre White Jr., was Loyola’s starting point guard as a freshman last season. He joined his dad at Harvest Christian. Two other standouts transferred in as well, Brennen Woods from Hampshire and JJ Flores from Huntley. That caused a bit of a stir in the Northwest suburbs. Judging from the way the Lions played on Wednesday at the Aurora Christian Tournament, they could make a major impact across the state in Class 1A basketball.

Harvest Christian beat Aurora Central 66-53. The Lions closed out the game with a 19-3 run in the final five minutes.

Harvest Christian (4-1) has some very interesting pieces. White is a promising young point guard. He scored 20 points in a win against Joliet Catholic on Tuesday and had 12 points, six assists and five steals against the Chargers.

“I’m enjoying the change,” White Jr. said. “I have more freedom. Last year at Loyola our offense was more set. Now I can run and that’s more my style, it’s much easier.”

Woods, a strong 6-4 leaper, had a career-high 22 points and 13 rebounds. Flores added 17 points.

“It’s a big change for me from Class 3A with Hampshire to the 1A style,” Woods said. “It’s a lot of new things coming together right now. With everyone coming from different schools it is all about practice. We need to gel.”

White is conservative about the team’s goals this season, which is probably wise for a first-year coach. He said the focus for the season is to “just keep getting better.” Woods is a senior, and he knows exactly what he wants.

“We can win state,” Woods said.

It was the season opener for Aurora Central and the Chargers were without senior Brett Czerak, who averaged 20 points last year. He picked up two yellow cards in a soccer game so wasn’t allowed to play according to Illinois High School Association rules.

“We’d obviously rather have him play, but we had more than enough out there to win tonight,” Aurora Central coach Nathan Dre said. “We still should have gotten it done.”

Kyle Czerak, Brett’s younger brother, did his best to pick up the slack. The junior scored 29 points, helping the Chargers to a 50-47 lead with 5:40 to play in the game.

“We just fell apart,” Drye said. “We went from up three to down three and then couldn’t make a shot down the stretch. We turned it over and took a couple stupid shots and it ended up costing us the game.”