Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Ursuline’s Jaylen Gunther inbounds the ball while his father, Ursuline coach Keith Gunther, looks on in the foreground.

DAYTON — For Keith Gunther, Ursuline’s state semifinal run this season has been all about family.

After the Irish captured their first regional championship in 30 years last week, Gunther celebrated the team’s success with those that mean the most to him.

“(That night), I allowed myself to enjoy it,” Gunther said earlier this week. “I had a blast with my family. … I took some time to reminisce with my wife, son and family. That was major for me. One thing that’s important to me, I’m a family person. I want my family to be proud of me. … That’s the biggest thing for me. What a lot of outside people think of me, that doesn’t bother me. It’s really, am I making my family proud of me?”

Gunther’s family was there for him last year when he was down after the Irish came up short in the district final.

They were there again for him in triumph last week as he won his first regional championship and made his first state semifinal appearance as a head coach, and they will be there for him once more in the aftermath of Ursuline’s season-ending loss to Kettering Archbishop Alter in Dayton on Saturday.

“There’s those people that go through the highs and lows with you. There’s years where you’re down because you felt like you didn’t do as good as you should have,” Gunther said. “You got that small circle of people who understand what you’re going through.”

Gunther has racked up plenty of wins, district titles and successful seasons in his coaching career, but this year’s state run has been something special — even more so because he’s been able to share it with his son, Jaylen, who as a freshman was Ursuline’s leading scorer this year.

“It was always my dream to have a son who could follow in my footsteps as a player and someday to be able to coach him,” Keith said. “This is one of the greatest things that’s occurred in my life. To have my son be on this team, and not only be on this team, but be a major contributor, that’s major.”

“It’s amazing. This has been my goal for two or three years now, just to bring my Dad this opportunity to come get (a state title),” Jaylen added after Ursuline’s loss Saturday. “Unfortunately we fell short, but we’ll be back.”

Sports have always been a part of the Gunther family. Keith’s daughter Macey was a softball player at Wright State, while his other daughter Megan was a track athlete at Youngstown State.

Jaylen grew up around sports, and his basketball journey with his father started at the very beginning. Keith quipped that Jaylen was “given a basketball in his crib” when he was born.

“Jay’s been in the gym since he was born, either in a carrier or watching me coach in my practices,” Keith said.

Since he first started to play basketball at age 4, Jaylen stayed in the gym. Now in his first year of high school, he was a major part of the reason why Ursuline had its best season since 1994.

“I just stuck with it,” Jaylen said. “I grinded every day and I just grew up in the game.”

But it’s not just Gunther’s own family that’s been on this ride with him, his family at Ursuline has been there, as well.

From the school administrators that first gave him the opportunity to coach the Irish 21 years ago, to his current players and coaching staff, they’ve all been part of the family that Gunther has garnered along the way.

“I wanted it bad for myself, but there’s people who I think really wanted me to have it maybe more than I did because of the commitment I made to them and the commitment they made to me,” Gunther said. “These people have had my back. The biggest hug I got was from Father (Richard) Murphy — he’s been there since day one for me. … You want to do it for yourself, but there’s also people that have invested a lot in you that you want to give back to them too.”

SENIOR SWAN SONG

While Jaylen may have led Ursuline in scoring as a freshman, the Irish’s run would never have been possible without the senior duo of Jaden Payne and Geno Lucente.

After being major contributors on an experienced district runner-up team last year, Payne and Lucente took the Irish’s talented freshman trio of Jaylen, Noah Bell and Jace Riccardo under their wings.

“Usually you don’t see a lot of freshmen like me, Jace and Noah come in and have a big impact, but our seniors let us do that,” Jaylen said. “It just feels great to come in and have a team that supports you and everything you do.”

It paid off dividends. The team gelled during preseason in the summer and things took off from there, as Ursuline opened the season with five straight wins, lost three games to tough competition midway through the year and then rallied to win 12 straight games to end the season before the state semifinal loss to Alter.

“If you told me during spring and summer that we’d get to state with three freshmen and two sophomores, I wouldn’t have believed you. I’m glad we got here,” Payne said. “I thought it would be a difficult adjustment playing with three younger guys and two sophomores, but we did it.”

In their final season of high school basketball, Payne and Lucente got a chance to be part of the best Ursuline team of the last 30 years.

What they did will help lay the foundation and set the standard for those underclassmen to continue to build on what the Irish accomplished this year.

“I’m really proud of the freshmen, sophomores, juniors and my brother Geno that we worked to get here,” Payne said. “We got here, but unfortunately we came up short. Next year, the next few years though, (Ursuline is) going to be back.”

FRESHMEN FUTURE

Now that its historic season is over, all Ursuline wants to do is get back to Dayton.

With six players returning from its varsity rotation, including Jaylen, Bell, Riccardo, as well as Myles Miller, Dashaun Will and Jared Klucinec, the Irish have the pieces to continue to pose a threat in their district and region over the next couple of years.

“There’s so many positives in that and then we got some younger guys that are coming up that we feel are going to be pretty talented also,” Keith said. “So with what we’ve got coming back — we got six varsity guys that are coming back who played major minutes for us. So we just need to understand what it’s going to take to get back here (to Dayton) and then what it’s going to take to compete at a higher level. So overall, great season. I’m proud of the guys and I’m just proud of our institution and everything we represent.”

Have an interesting story? Contact Neel Madhavan by email at nmadhavan@tribtoday.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @NeelMadhavan.