When high school basketball fans think back to the 1980s, programs like Quincy, Providence St. Mel, East St. Louis Lincoln and the arrival of city powers King and Simeon are easy to think back on.
The 1990s brought us memorable basketball giants in Peoria Manual and Thornton, a few steamrolling Proviso East teams and the continued dominance of King.
The first 10 years of the 2000s included Glenbrook North, Peoria High and the beginning of a Simeon juggernaut.
Earlier this year we broke down the decade’s best teams and best players. Now, with every season of the past decade complete, it’s time to look at the Chicago area programs who won the most.
This list is comprised of the 50 winningest programs over the past 10 years, starting with the 2010-11 season and concluding with the 2019-20 season. Every team in every class throughout the Chicago area will be broken down in a variety of ways. But total wins, with winning percentage used as tie-breaker, determined the rankings.
We present No. 6 Newark today and will add one program a day going forward.
6. NEWARK: 232-87
Decade’s biggest storyline: Sitting at the very outskirts of the area, some 60 or so miles from downtown Chicago, is this tiny school with an enrollment of less than 200 students.
The overwhelming success can’t be denied, though, and the basketball history runs deep at Newark. With all that success and history, nothing surpasses the 2010-11 state championship season where the Norsemen won a school record 33 games.
Led by the tandem of Kyle Anderson and John Avery, the Norsemen won regional, sectional and supersectional plaques before dominating in Peoria. Newark beat Deer Creek-Mackinaw 52-32 in the state semifinals and then finished the year 33-1 following a 57-35 win over West Central Coop in the Class 1A state championship game.
The lone loss that season came to Class 2A third-place finisher Rockford Christian in the championship game of the Plano Christmas Classic.
Underrated highlight: While the state championship game was the signature moment of the program and the decade, the 2016-17 team returned to the state finals.
Newark, led by Will Clausel, Dylan Patrick and Cameron Myre, beat Aurora Christian in the sectional final and Ridgeview in the super-sectional. But the Norsemen then dropped two games in Peoria to finish fourth in the state in Class 1A.
Player of the Decade:Kyle Anderson (2011)
All-Decade Team:Kyle Anderson (2011), John Avery (2011), Brett Anderson (2013), Will Clausel (2017) and Dylan Patrick (2018)
Other decade highlights:
-In addition to the first two state trophies for Newark basketball, the decade produced eight regional championships and four sectional titles.
-The Little Ten Conference is the oldest continually run high school basketball conference in Illinois with the beginning of conference play dating back to 1919-20. The Norsemen won six regular-season conference championships and six Little Ten Conference Tournaments in the past 10 years.
