COLUMBUS, Ind. — When the Northside Middle School eighth-graders trailed Seymour by three points at halftime in the semifinals of Saturday’s season-ending Tri County Tournament, Ben Stevens thought back to what Josh Speidel had been telling the team all season.
“The first three minutes of the second half is what determines the rest of the game,” Stevens recalled Speidel telling them. “Today, that came into play.”
The Spartans, who came back to win by 19 points, benefited from Speidel’s words of wisdom this season. He is back in his hometown as a life skills teaching assistant at Schmitt Elementary and eighth-grade B-team boys basketball coach at Northside.
“I’ve loved that,” Speidel said. “It’s a perfect setup because I’m there, and then I just walk right over to Northside for practice after school.”
Six years ago, that might have seemed like an unrealistic dream for Speidel. Columbus North’s all-time leading scorer was critically injured in a Feb. 2, 2015 car accident near Taylorsville near the end of his senior season.
Despite suffering a traumatic brain injury and doctors giving Speidel a dire prognosis, Vermont coach John Becker, whose team Speidel had signed to play for a couple months earlier, came to Indianapolis to visit him in the hospital and told his family the school would honor his scholarship.
Following a year of rehab, Speidel headed to Burlington, Vermont, where he spent four years with the Catamounts program. He made national headlines last March when Becker inserted him into the starting lineup on senior night, and in his first and only collegiate game, he made a layup on a prearranged play, then exited to a rousing ovation.
“Coach Becker, in my eyes, is the best coach in the nation,” Speidel said. “He has one of the best mid-majors in the nation. Just being four years under him and getting to see how him and his coaching staff run practices. What they taught me there, I tried to implement here.”
For the complete story and more photos, see Sunday’s Republic.
