By Ron Rop
LocalSportsJournal.com

MUSKEGON – The Whitehall Vikings’ first-ever appearance in the Muskegon Area Sports Hall of Fame Holiday Classic Basketball Tournament will be remembered for a long time to come.

Not only did the Vikings dispatch the Fruitport Trojans, 72-43, but also celebrated a milestone reached by junior Camden Thompson.

Thompson scored on a putback after a battle in the lane for the 1,000th point of his already stellar prep career. He is the fifth Viking player to reach that scoring mark with Jared Edsall sitting at the top with more than 1,100 points.

Thompson went on to score 26 points and pull down 24 rebounds as the Vikings moved to 8-0 on the season.

“It’s great especially with the group of guys I have on this team,” said Thompson, who said he had no idea how many points he needed in Wednesday’s game to reach the 1,000 mark. “I’m really grateful that I got the opportunity to play varsity as a freshman and for my coach for believing in me.

“I didn’t know how close I was, someone said 20, or like 28 or 18,” he said. “I was just playing to win.”

“He’s a stud,” Viking coach Christian Subdon said. “There’s no way around him, he’s a 1,000 point scorer now and thank God we got that off his back.

“A 1,000 point scorer as a junior is no small feat,” said Subdon. “I’m just really proud of him, but we’ve got other guys too.

“The opening quarter started a bit sluggish for Whitehall, although Thompson popped in eight points in the opening eight minutes and the Vikings had a 14-6 lead.

Brock Morningstar provided the spark in the second quarter with three 3-pointers within the first four minutes of the quarter. That, along with a 3-pointer from Camar Ready and a pair of buckets by Thompson pushed the Vikings’ advantage to 39-19 at the half.

“It’s a weird time to play at 3 o’clock so we defended really well in that first quarter and second quarter which really helped us,” Subdon said. “Then we started hitting some shots. We had open shots in the first that we weren’t hitting then we started making some shots and that helps.”

Ryan Bosch was the lone spark for the Trojans with nine points.

The second half belonged to the Vikings outscored the Trojans 33-24.  That included a 14-0 run in the latter stages of the final quarter.

Camar Ready finished with 13 points for the Vikings and Kal Koehler chipped in 10 points and 10 rebounds.

Fruitport was led by Bosch with 17 points, most of which came from close range of the basket.

“It’s been a grind for us,” Subdon said. “We’ve played a lot of games. We’ve played eight games and we’re usually sitting at four games right now. These guys have been through almost half a season already so that’s part of the grind.”

And the Vikings would certainly welcome a chance to play in the classic again.”It always feels good to win and to play in a cool venue,” Subdon said. “There were a lot of fans and it’s a cool thing.”