What's happened to New Ulm basketball?

NEW ULM - From 1983-1987, the New Ulm High School girls basketball team posted a mark 99-10, winning three South Central Conference titles outright and sharing two others.

In that same time span, winning a SCC crown was far from the minds of the Eagle football team, recording a 1-8 mark in 1983 before finishing 2-6 the next four years for a record of 9-32.

But in the last few years, fortunes of both of those teams have reversed with the Eagle football team winning or sharing in five SCC titles while the girls basketball team has fallen on hard times.

Since last winning a South Central Conference title back in 1987 under coach Kathy Goodridge, New UIm High School has posted a 79-231 mark in the past 14 years. They have recorded double-digit wins just three times with 10 wins in 1988, 12 wins in 1994 and 11 wins in 1996. They have only two .500 or better season marks in that span as they see their fourth new head coach in the past 13 years.

Why the lack of success? You can blame the coaches, which would be totally wrong. Or you can place the blame on the athletes, which is also wrong.

Then what happened?

Dan Saari, who took over for Goodridge in 1988 and coached through the 1992 season did not want to comment on New Ulm girls basketball.

"There are a lot of theories as to why that has happened, but I don't know if I could tell you for sure why it has dropped off," said Dave Janssen who coached the Eagles from 1993-1999. "I think that there are just more different activities for girls to do. Years ago, there was only one winter sport in girls basketball - it takes a lot of time in order to get ready for basketball."

This year, the Eagle dance line has 33 girls out with girls hockey, gymnastics and swimming also taking numbers.

"I don't think that you can say that it (losing) is because of a lack of dedication because each girl has to determine how dedicated they are going to be," he said. "There are just a lot more things for them to do during the winter."

Paul Meyer, who took over for Janssen and coached two years at NUHS, feels that there was a strong foundation started when he was at New Ulm High School.

"It is hard for me to look beyond the two years that I was there," said Meyer, now the head volleyball coach and assistant girls basketball coach at Sauk Rapids High School. "The one thing that we worked real hard on getting was getting some continuity in the youth program and building from there. And I thought that we got that going because we got that going; we had a lot of kids involved.

"And the other thing is - and I look at a lot of other programs that are similiar to New Ulm - and I know from history that New Ulm was dominant in girls basketball back in the late 80s. Most programs that hit a struggling part for what ever reason, if it was an off-year or two or whatever, the key is to rebound quickly and why that didn't happen, I don't know. But when the program doesn't, then you fall into a struggling situation that is sometimes hard to get out of. To get out of it, it takes time."

Meyer said that when a program starts to lose, "people do not want to associate themselves with that - they want to associate themselves with a winner and suddenly your numbers go down."

The number fell when the program started losing, and Meyer along with the New Ulm Basketball Association knew that.

"We tried to get our numbers back up - we all tried . We had one senior last year," he said. "But if you look back eight years with that same crew of girls, you had the numbers, but they gradually started dropping. You will lose some kids as they get older and that is natural, but you need numbers."

YOUTH PROGRAM KEY: Meyer said one of the big keys to success at any program is the youth program.

"You look at New London-Spicer (girls basketball) and their youth program. They have huge programs and there is consistency (in the coaching). And, of course, success breeds success just as failure breeds failure. Numbers is the thing; you need kids out and excited about it...You need kids out playing all the time and that was not happening at New Ulm High School. You need to break that cycle and it is hard to break that cycle. I have been through several rebuilding programs especially in volleyball. You need the numbers up."

MANY THINGS NEED WORK: Meyer said that it would "be an easy thing to blame (girls hockey, dance line, swimming, gymnastics) but there are other schools out there the size of New Ulm High School with multi-sports that have a lot of success. You look at the dedication - you need to put time into something to be successful. You want to be involved with a winner. When you start with the youth program you need to get the kids excited about the game - not the winning and losing but for the game and love playing it."

BASEBALL/SOFTBALL EXAMPLES: Meyer added that a perfect example is the success that baseball and softball have in New Ulm.

"Kids start playing baseball and softball in New Ulm because they love the game - baseball is New Ulm's game. Because they play, they get better. Plus they have numbers.

"It is hard to pinpoint one area, but it is a combination of several things," he said. "People think that a new coach can turn things around right away which doesn't happen most of the time. It takes time, in particular with basketball. Football in New Ulm with Rick Van Roekel is successful now. But I am sure that when he first started out, people were questioning what he does. But he stayed there, with the system and now there is a nice program. You have that consistency in coaching and it helps."

FOOTBALL TURNS CORNER: New Ulm High School football coach Rick VanRoekel knew that it was going to be a struggle to turn around a football program that was consistently losing.

"My thing going in as coach was - and not being an expert at the time - was that I looked back and saw that there was not a head football coach that stayed very long," he said. "Coaches would stay two, three or four years with four years being the max that they hung around. Some of those coaches before were probably smarter than I was, but they didn't stay long in the program."

VanRoekel just finished his 14th season as head coach.

"I have coaches that have been in the program as long as I have been and that really helps," he said. "That is the whole key in any program. When I watched the team (as an assistant coach) I saw that coaches would run two of three different offenses and coaches would change offenses every year; there was no consistency. I don't care if it is football, hockey or wrestling. When you keep changing philosophies, it takes a while."

Now, the Eagles have success and success breeds numbers and that breeds winning.

"No one wanted to play football back in the late 80s, but once we started winning, kids started coming out because they wanted to be competitive and winning. Now, we have kids talking football."

CULHANE AT MARSHALL: When Terry Culhane left Tracy-Milroy High School to take over a struggling Marshall High School girls basketball program five years ago, he stepped into a program that had won one game the year before.

"When I came here (Marshall), we were about as bad as a program could be," he said. "We had had two of three years with one or two wins."

There, Culhane has taken a program and rebuilt it from what was the pits to now perhaps one of the top programs in the state.

So what comes first - the coach or the players in a rebuilding program?

"You can't put one above the other," said Culhane, who was offered the head girls coaching job two years ago. "You need to have athletes - the coach's role is to develop them into better players. When I came here (to a then-losing program) we had a lot of youngsters gung-ho about basketball and they were better than our older kids. What we ended up doing is playing the younger kids more. It is a process; the girls need to know that if they want to be successful they have to work extra on their game in the off-season. If you don't, you will not keep up with the Joneses."

Culhane said that "sometimes the numbers issue is misunderstood. Having lots of numbers is not always the best thing. The most important thing is you have to have kids who want to play. You can have 20 kids, but if their philosophy is that they want it to be like an intramural program, that is not conducive to turning around a program."

Culhane continued, "You need to find talented kids that want to play and let them play. You have to develop a adminstration that wants to win and I know that Harold Remme (District 88 Superintendent) is very supportive of successful programs. Sometimes high school athletics are not for everyone. Plus, you need the hard work and perseverance."

Last year, Marshall won the Class 3-A title and is a favorite to repeat again this year. Not bad for a program that only won one or two games five years ago.

EAGLE GIRLS SHOW EFFORT: One thing that a coach wants from his team is hustle. Tuesday night, Eagle coach Brad Metter got that from his team in a 38-23 loss to Waseca. While the shooting was not want he wanted (7-for-49 just over 14 percent from the field) he had to be happy with the way that they hustled all the time. It could have been easy for this team to roll over and quit, especially with the lack of success that they have had recently. But they didn't. Tif Drill, Amanda Rosenau, Liz Dannenberg, Brittany Gorres, Stacey Stueber, Rachel Kitzberger, Megan Hauge, Angie Flor and Briana Batzlaff all played hard. It was not due to a lack of effort. Many times, winning does not begin with a victory but rather giving that winning effort even in a loss.

BOYS LOSE TO MARSHALL: Boys basketball coach Pat Burmeister said his team "did not execute well on offense" in an 80-33 loss to Marshall Tuesday night. "We did not pass the ball or have an understanding of what we needed to do to get good shots. We did not shoot the ball well when we got good shots."

He said that his team also did not play good defense. "We let them get the ball in the paint and take good shots; they shot 80 per cent in the first half. If you can't play with defensive intensity, get after them and put some pressure on them, they will pick you apart. It was a poor performance on our part overall."

Marshall pressed New UIm and forced 27 turnovers."We did not have anyone step up and be the floor leader out there; someone has to get us started and going. There were a lot of people unsure of themselves.It is still early in the year; we start one senior and a couple of the juniors played last year. But you need five players on the court knowing what they are doing. We will get better but it will take time."

Burmeister said that Bob Wellmnan :"was still hurting": with an ankle injury suffered in football. "He was hobbling a little bit yet and has been inconsistent but that will come."

ZIMMERMAN DONE AT RIDGEWATER: Jeremy Zimmermanm the son of Dale and Roxie Zimmerman of New Ulm, completed his schooling at Ridgewater College in Willmar.

The Liberal Arts major and captain had 27 solo tackles, 47 primary tackles, 35 assisted stops along with two sacks this year. He also had nine tackles for losses and was Defensive Player of the Week in a win over Fergus Falls. He was First Team All-Conference.