Benet senior guards Emilia and Maggie Sularski have always done everything together.
The twins are entering their third season as starters and eighth overall on the court.
“We started toward the end of fifth grade and began travel ball in sixth grade,” Emilia Sularski said. “We were not good.”
That, at least, has changed. Emilia and Maggie Sularski helped the Redwings win two state trophies in their first two seasons as starters — for fourth place in 2021 and for second place last year — and will be expected to lead a young team that has only one other senior.
“They’ve both been really good for a couple of years, and they continue to improve,” Benet coach Joe Kilbride said. “For both of them, a lot of it is going to be how are they going to be vocal and be role models for the girls. They’re both working at it and doing a nice job.”
The Sularski sisters are often working on their game with their uncle Daniel Stopka, who has been their skills coach — and main inspiration — since the beginning. Stopka, 32, who has been paralyzed from the neck down and needed a wheelchair since a diving accident when he was 19, is a trusted mentor and enthusiastic coach.
“He was actually a football player in high school, and then after his accident he started watching more basketball,” Maggie Sularski said. “He was a fan of the Chicago Bulls when they had Derrick Rose. From then on, he’s been studying and helping us.”
That involves using videos and other sources of info.
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“He can’t show us (physically), so he does it through his iPad,” Emilia Sularski said. “Training us, working us hard every day and being in the position that he is in is insane.”
Stopka attends a lot of Benet games, as do many other relatives in the tightknit family. But basketball lessons aren’t the only thing he has given to the Sularski sisters.
“I’m living proof of something terrible happening and not pouting about it, not really making excuses,” Stopka said. “Stuff is going to happen. That’s kind of the message I try to send them.”
That message has been heard loud and clear.
“It just shows me how I shouldn’t complain about the littlest stuff because he is put in this position every single day,” Maggie Sularski said. “You could easily give up, so I should push through adversity and just be grateful for what I have and what he’s given us. I want to make him proud.”
Stopka said he emphasizes “resilience.”
“I like using that word because as an athlete, you see it pretty much every second,” he said. “It’s about how you get out of those bad situations and you’re able to be resilient.
“Throughout the years, they’ve definitely developed a higher level of being OK with things going wrong. If they miss a shot, continue shooting the ball just like in practice.”
The 5-foot-11 Emilia Sularski, who is an inch taller than her sister, is known as a 3-point specialist. Maggie Sularski is a defensive stopper.
“We’re kind of opposites in that way,” Emilia Sularski said. “My goal this year is to expand my role and try to be more on the defensive side because coach wants me to rebound this year.”
With former star Lenee Beaumont at Indiana, Maggie Sularski said she would like to shoot more.
“I’ve been the main defense person, so now that Lenee has moved on, I think I can show my offensive role,” Maggie Sularski said. “I’m going to have to expand my role in general.”
Kilbride said the Sularski sisters will be vital to Benet’s continued success.
“They are definitely different players,” Kilbride said. “Both bring a lot of unique things to us, and they’re going to be really important to what we do this year.”
The Sularski sisters will be together even after this season. They have committed to play at Hillsdale College, a Division II school in Michigan.
They had Division I offers but not from the same schools.
“I told them there is not a DI school that’s going to offer you both, so you’ve got to decide: ‘Do I want to go DI, or do I want to stay together?'” Kilbride said. “They were unwavering in ‘we really want to stick together.’
“I think they’ll do really well there. It’s a good fit. Close enough that mom and dad and grandparents and uncles can get there, which is important to them.”
Indeed, Emilia Sularski is glad Stopka, who lives three doors down, won’t be too far away.
“I’ve just been really grateful to have him by my side from day one, helping me through, because he could have just stayed at home, done nothing,” Emilia Sularski said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for him.
“He’s been my main inspiration, so I have a lot to thank him for.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.