It had been 30 years since the Wallkill boys’ basketball team hoisted the Mid Hudson Athletic League championship trophy.

That changed on Thursday afternoon when the Division I champion Panthers beat the Division III champion Rhinebeck Hawks, 85-52, in the Vinnie DeAngelis Gymnasium.

“This is something we’ve been thinking about since we were in middle school,” said Mat Shea, who led the Panthers with a game-high 20 points. “Even before that, we knew this group is special. We’re locked in and we’ve all been locked in since seventh grade thinking about this moment, and this is just going to motivate us to achieve more.”

For their coach, Wallkill High School graduate Hunter Andrews, it’s the MHAL championship the team couldn’t win when he played on it.

“This means a lot,” Andrews said. “It means so much it hasn’t really hit me. I wanted to win one of these when I was a player, but we were always running into dominant Red Hook teams. So being able to coach a crew of guys like this and do it with them, I’m so proud of them.”

This year, the Panthers have been the dominant team the rest of the league has been running into. They only lost one game, an 80-78 triple overtime to the Marlboro Iron Dukes.

The Panthers avenged that loss on Feb. 22 with a 56-45 win over the Iron Dukes in Marlboro. Krebs led the Panthers with 18 points and Shea added 17. Jeremy Figueroa scored 18.

“I think for both us and Marlboro, it was that attention to detail,” Andrews said. “We both made some adjustments, and they both worked hard. Marlboro’s really tough defensively.”

Shea led for Panthers in double figures in the win over Rhinebeck. Kyle Krebs scored 14 points, nine of which came in the second quarter as he helped turn an eight-point Wallkill lead into an 11-point advantage. The Panthers knocked down 13 total 3-point baskets in the game.

“I feel like my shooting sometimes helps the rest of the offense get into a little bit of a flow,” Krebs said. “So, you know, when I’m feeling it, and I get a few 3s, it just feels good.”

R.J. Taylor hit three 3-pointers on his way to 12 points and Jeremy Figueroa did most of his work under the basket, grabbing rebounds and scoring 12 points.

“When we have missed shots or even any time, I just go for the boards and put them back up,” Figueroa said. “I know I can trust my teammates with Kyle and Mat shooting the ball and getting to the basket, and just being able to trust one another.”

The Panthers are hoping that trust carries them far, as they are not content with the program’s first MHAL championship since 1992.
They have bigger plans.

“We’ve been saying this whole time, we knew this was coming,” Krebs said. “We knew we could do this. We just tried to stick together as a team, and we’re not done yet. We’re coming for a section ship.”

That road was scheduled to begin on Tuesday as the Panthers advanced all the way to Tuesday’s Section 9 Class A semifinal, where No. 2 Wallkill will host the winner of Saturday’s game between the No. 6 Washingtonville Wizards and No. 3 Beacon Bulldogs.

The winner will play on Thursday for the Section 9 Class A championship at 7 p.m. at SUNY Sullivan.

“It’s a great first step for us because this is just leading the way toward what we want, which is to be section champs and again all the way to states,” Figueroa said. “Our group work ethic and all of that is going to get us where we need to be.”