FRUITPORT – For fans who have enjoyed the Fruitport boys basketball team’s success over the past two seasons, the good news is that it’s not likely to end any time soon.

That’s because the Trojans received a rare infusion of talent, in the form of two unusually promising freshmen over the past two seasons. They have made what would have been a good team a whole lot better, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Last season Dexter Lillmars broke in as a ninth-grader, led the team in scoring, and helped the Trojans set a single-season team victory record and win an O-K Silver conference championship.

This year, as a sophomore, he has developed into one of the top offensive players in the area as the Trojans set a another victory record and won a second straight conference title.

Freshmen Garrett Olson, a 6-foot-5 natural post player, joined the varsity this season and made a deep Trojan rotation even deeper, with his scoring, rebounding and defensive abilities.

The importance of both players can be summed up by their personal stats from Friday night’s big win over Calvin Christian, which clinched a second straight conference title for the Trojans.

Lillmars finished with a game-high 25 points, along with seven rebounds and five assists. Olson totaled 11 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots.

Now they will both play key roles in the postseason, starting on Wednesday, when the Trojans play Orchard View at Montague High School in a district tournament semifinal game.

While some fans may take their contributions for granted, imagine being a 15-year-old ninth-grader joining a team full of 17- and 18-year-old juniors and seniors, and adjusting to playing at a much faster pace against much bigger opponents.

There were no development stops at the freshman or junior varsity level. For Lillmars and Olson, it was straight to the show.

“The pace is way different,” Lillmars said. “Middle school was just a lot of slow half-court settings, and the players here are much bigger. It was a big adjustment.

“I definitely felt a little bit of pressure coming in, but after the first couple games that went away. I saw I could handle it, because I had done a lot of work, and my teammates had a lot of confidence in me.

“Obviously people were talking, and that can be a lot to deal with, but I just trusted the work I was putting in.”

Olson said he felt a little lost in the earliest part of this season, but quickly adjusted.

“In the first game, I kind of didn’t know where I really was, then I figured it out,” he said. “It was definitely high pressure, but everyone was there for me. They made me feel like I belonged here, and that I had put in the work to be here. I was definitely nervous, but that went away after a few games, knowing I could play with these guys.”

Lillmars and Olson are actually just the latest additions to a broader youth movement that has come to fruition over time, leading up to the team that has posted a 19-3 overall record this season.

Senior DayDay Williams, who recently became only the third 1,000-point scorer in program history, came up as a freshman in 2022, while junior Hudson Hazekamp, another strong performer, came up as a freshman a year later.

Then Lillmars and Olson arrived, giving the team a tremendous amount of talent and depth, spanning the entire high school age spectrum.

“It certainly is unusual,” said Fruitport head coach Steve Erny. “We’ve had four freshmen on varsity, all who have started for us right away – DayDay and Hudson, and now Dexter and Garrett.

“Dexter came in last year as a freshman, led us in scoring and was an all-conference performer. He made an immediate impact and led us in a lot of ways. That’s very unusual for a freshman. And this year Garrett has come in and had some excellent games.

“That’s really rare and really special.”

Rapid development

Lillmars was really good as a freshman last season, leading the team in scoring with a average of 15.6 points per game, along with 5.2 rebounds.

He’s been even better this year – a lot better, actually – averaging 21 points and seven rebounds per game.

He has grown and filled out a lot this season, become a more physical player, and has expanded his offensive capabilities. Last year he became known as a three-point sharpshooter, and that’s still his specialty, but this season he’s getting more points close to the basket, and is becoming a serious inside-outside threat.

Lillmars and Williams (15.7 points per game average) have given the Trojans the kind of offensive duo that can carry a team a long way.

Lillmars gave a strong hint of what he was capable of in his very first varsity game, scoring 22 points in a win over Muskegon Heights on Nov., 26, 2024.

This year he’s had a streak of monster scoring games – 32 points against Whitehall, 30 against Kelloggsville. 27 against Comstock Park, and 26 twice against Hopkins and once against Comstock Park.

He’s proven he can do it on back-to-back nights, scoring 29 against Godwin Heights on a Monday, then 26 against Hopkins on Tuesday.

Even when he doesn’t have a big scoring game, Lillmars finds other ways to contribute. In a game against Lowell this season, he had 17 points, eight rebounds, four assists and three steals.

“He’s had great growth from his freshman to sophomore year,” Erny said about Lillmars. ‘He’s had a little more on his shoulders this year and he’s elevated his aggressiveness on offense.

“He’s also in our captain group, and he’s leading more vocally this year. Last year he was a guy who was a competitor and really wanted to win, while this year is he finding more ways to lead and bring others along with him.”

Olson came to varsity this year with a bit of a legacy. His father, Jared Olson, is the all-time leading scorer in Fruitport basketball history.

The younger Olson has a long way to go before he matches his dad’s exploits, but he’s off to a very good start, averaging 7.3 points, six rebounds and one block per game.

Olson has benefitted by being surrounded by talented teammates who score a lot, so he has not felt the pressure to post big numbers every night.

He’s had his share of quiet games statistically, but he’s also had some very impressive outings, like in the second game of the season, when totaled 16 points and seven rebounds in a win over Cedar Springs.

Olson also had 16 points, six rebounds, three steals and two blocks against Godwin Heights, and 13 points, six rebounds and three steals against Lowell.

“We’ve had some games where we needed him to score more, and he’s done that,” Erny said about Olson. “He has grown a ton from the beginning of the year. The game has slowed down for him a lot.

“On the defensive end, in the first few games he was still learning some team concepts, but at this point he is one of our best defenders, not just as a shot blocker, but we can also put him on some of the better perimeter players.

“He’s been a sponge when it comes to learning. He works really hard and wants it really badly. He certainly has a long way to go, but I could see him becoming one of the better players in the area, for sure.”

The future can wait

Erny can’t help but sound optimistic when you ask him about the future, with two more years of Lillmars in the lineup and three more with Olson.

“When you think about those two guys being able to play together two more years, it’s really exciting,” the coach said. “We will have a lot of other really good players around them, as well.

“You look at those two, the other guys who are coming back, and some guys that people don’t even know about yet, and you can kind of map it out for the next four or five years. We should be in pretty good shape for years to come.”

Lillmars and Olson agree with that assessment, but they are not terribly interested in the future at the moment, because they very much want to finish what they started this season.

They have piled up the wins after answering several challenges. A big one came early in the season, when the Trojans won their first two games, then lost back-to-back games in one week to Mona Shores and rival Spring Lake.

The season could have gone either way at that point. The Trojans could have lost their confidence and swagger, or doubled down and made sure they played up to their potential.

They chose the latter and it worked out well, resulting in a 15-game winning streak that lasted for just over two months.

“We knew that if we wanted to go far, we had to keep pushing,” Olson said. “We knew that intensity and defense were going to win games. Our team captains let us know that we had to keep pushing ourselves.”

Another big shock came last Monday, three days after the Trojans’ impressive come-from-behind overtime win over NorthPointe Christian in a conference showdown. They were stunned by Calvin Christian, 51-39, ending the long winning streak.

“That showed us we can’t just show up and beat everybody if we don’t play our game,” Olson said.

The Trojans pulled it together again after that upset, beating Godwin Heights 76-58 the very next night, then pounding Calvin Christian 65-42 in a rematch lasf Friday to clinch the outright conference championship.

Gaining a bit of revenge against Calvin Christian was important to the Trojans, according to Lillmars.

“We obviously wanted that one really badly, and we responded really well,” he said. “I think even after the loss on Monday, we were confident that we were the better team, and we wanted to prove that.”

Now its on to the state tournament, starting on Wednesday in districts, where the Trojans will be trying to break new ground. After winning the conference last year, they were quickly eliminated from districts in their first game against Oakridge.

This year’s team thinks it can make a much longer run, and the players are excited, according to Lillmars.

“We definitely have a lot of confidence,” he said. “People who have watched our team know our group is very special and has a chance to go really far. I don’t see any team as unbeatable. We can go as far as we want, as long as we lock in and do the things we’re capable of doing.”