Twins bring victory to Faith
By Jennifer Cesarz
Correspondent
A basketball team is fortunate when it has one stand-out player, but Faith Christian School in Williams Bay was fortunate two times over for the past four years with identical twins Adam and Alex Montsma.
The Montsmas, lifelong Delavan residents, are seniors at Faith and April 10 signed national letters of intent to play basketball at Judson University in Elgin, Ill.
Brian Pollard, head boys’ basketball coach at Faith Christian, says both players are great to coach – Adam has the ability to score inside and outside, while Alex is the most complete player he has ever coached.
The twins have been playing ball together since first grade, almost year-round, and have played on the same team for the past 12 years.
This year they led Faith Christian to the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association Regional final game where they fell 56-54 to Milwaukee Academy of Science, but not before winning the Indian Trails-Blue Conference for the second year in a row, posting a conference record of 9-1.
The duo led Faith to an overall record of 21-4, with Adam scoring 26 points per game and Alex contributing more than 17 points per game.
Alex out-rebounded his brother by a few, collecting 160 rebounds while Adam posted 145.
Both players started all four years at Faith Christian and were three-year captains. Adam is a three-time First Team All-Conference selection, while Alex is a two-time selection. Both won Second Team All-Walworth County honors last year, and this year Adam took First Team honors, while Alex just missed being voted onto the first team, but won Second Team honors again.
Alex was named the most valuable player of his team at Faith, and Adam was named to the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association Division 5 honorable mention team and will represent the division at the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches Association All-Star Game in June in Madison.
Awards aside, if you ask the brothers who will win in a one-on-one game in the driveway their answers are bound to be different.
“Me always,” Alex said. “Just kidding. We play a lot of one-on-one whenever we have free time. He wins some games, I win some games.”
Adam added, “It gets pretty competitive but we are evenly matched.”
And, according to Alex, that competition level goes up a notch when their dad, Don Montsma, watches.
“He pushes both of us to become better athletes,” he said.
Back on the indoor court, both boys admit that their junior year holds their best memories.
“One of my favorite memories was my junior year when the team went 24-1,” Adam said. “We finished the regular season undefeated.”
Alex said being ranked in the state polls last year was another great memory of his junior year.
As far as their senior year goes, both boys agree it was beating a Division 1 school in the regular season that holds the best memory.
“I loved playing against Destiny. They had a Division 1 top-ranked junior (Jerrelle Deberry) on their team,” Alex said.
With their four years of high school behind them, the coaching staff at Judson University knows how fortunate they are the twins have decided to go to school together and will hopefully have the same success that Faith Christian did when the boys played there.
