ORANGE CITY, Iowa | Having a state championship basketball team featured in the Orange City Tulip Festival parade is becoming as commonplace as the tulips themselves.
MOC-FV High School defeated Unity Christian for the Class 3A girls' state basketball title in 2014, and both Orange City-based teams were feted in the Tulip Festival parade. Unity Christian earned a Class 2A title in 2015, then repeated this season with a dramatic victory over neighbor Western Christian High School.
That means the Unity Christian Knights girls' basketball team will be honored in the parade again this May. And, Coach Jay Schuiteman will be along for the ride, once again.
It might be fitting, as Schuiteman peddles tulips, among other plants and flowers, for a living. He's one of the principal owners of Ground Effects, a thriving floral, landscaping and wholesale enterprise on Highway 75 along the southern edge of neighboring Sioux Center, Iowa.
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"Growing together," is the motto of Ground Effects, a slogan that shows on Schuiteman's business card. It's a tag line that also fits the high school basketball program he has directed since 2003-04.
For as much as the student-athletes grow in the Knights winning program, the coach does, too.
Growing together? Schuiteman has seen all sorts of growth. His first Knights varsity ball club, after all, won one game while losing 19.
"In that one victory that season, our team survived two banked-in three-pointers late in the game," he says. "Our parents stormed the court after we won."
The Knights in 2003-04 averaged 33.5 points per game and 34.5 turnovers per game.
"We had one three-pointer that season," says Schuiteman, 41. "It was the last shot of the season, a banked-in three-pointer from half-court."
The Knights won 25 games this season in claiming their second straight state title. Schuiteman's team connected on 117 three-pointers in the process.
As far as the program has grown since 2003, Schuiteman says the coach has grown just as much, probably more.
"I got into coaching initially (as a junior varsity coach for the girls' program in 1999-2000) as my wife, Alissa, and I didn't have kids," he says. "In fact, we struggled to have children. I always say that God got me into coaching, as the basketball girls were our girls."
Since that time, Alissa and Jay have adopted three girls through Bethany Christian Services, which has maintained a presence in Orange City for four decades. Jay now serves on the board of directors for Bethany Christian Services.
The Schuiteman girls are Darby, 14, Tyra, 11, and Mia, 8.
"I've always treated the girls in our basketball program the way I'd want people to treat my kids," Jay Schuiteman says. "I really look at all these girls as my girls, as our girls."
The "our" refers to Alissa, who helps host members of the teams at the Schuiteman house in Orange City throughout the season. Often times, members of the Unity girls' basketball teams gather at the Schuiteman home after school on game days for snacks, homework and a time of togetherness and devotions.
Unity Christian is Christian Reformed-based, says Schuiteman, a 1992 graduate who played basketball and baseball there before doing the same at Dordt College in Sioux Center, where in 1996 he earned a business degree with a coaching minor.
"I got into coaching for the relationships," he says, noting that highlights aren't necessarily victory streaks or conference titles or trophies, but rather the messages from former players, who share important life developments with their old coach.
"The text that says, 'I'm engaged,' or 'Coach, I'm going to have a baby,' that's what I value," Schuiteman says. "Winning is great, but what I'm really after is trying to send these girls out from Unity as better people."
That's a main reason Schuiteman focuses devotional time or team-bonding efforts around a series of books, at which the center remains "The Divine Dance," a book by Shannon Kubiak.
"Ultimately, the book asks, 'Who are you dancing for?'" he says.
Another book, "The Love & Respect Book," goes from Schuiteman to each former player as a wedding gift, along with a personal note.
That level of care, and the support from Alissa and his fellow Knights coaches, Unity's teachers, administrators and parents, plants seeds for growing winners long before trapping defensive schemes and offensive sets take center stage. It is why, this business and basketball CEO finds himself again as a focal point with a championship squad moving south down Central Avenue, part of the Orange City Tulip Festival parade.
It's a journey, Schuiteman says, but one worth traveling. And one, in reality, that can be reduced to a golden rule of sorts when it comes to coaching.
So says the coach, who puts the bulk of his philosophy in one succinct statement. "Your kids," he says, "need to know you care about them."
