His Rams are 4-0 and will host Carroll on Friday night at Mulcahey Gym. Weisgerber is 299-166 in 21 seasons at the Badin helm.
BOYS BASKETBALL LEAGUE PREVIEWS
» GCLC CENTRAL: Purcell short-handed, but still voted No. 1
» SWBL BUCKEYE: Injuries aside, Madison favored to repeat
» SWOC: Northwest favored to make it five straight titles
» GCLC NORTH: Eagles earn preseason No. 1 position
» SWBL SW: Franklin, Brookville share preseason No. 1
“I don’t know how many people actually know it, and that’s fine,” he said. “I knew I was close. You’ve got to fill out the preseason form every year to send in and you’ve got to put your won-loss record on it, so it was there to start the year. You hope you’re going to win five games in a season.
“It just means I’ve been around a long time and I’ve had an awful lot of good players and an awful lot of good assistant coaches. I attribute it to everybody that’s come through here since 1982.”
Weisgerber, 65, is in the third year of his second stint as the Rams’ head coach.
He headed the program from 1981-82 to 1998-99, winning 272 games and a Division III state championship (in 1987-88) before departing for Lakota West and 14 years as an administrator.
The desire to coach never left him, though, and Weisgerber ended up returning as a varsity assistant under Sean Van Winkle for two years at West and under Matt Thompson for two years at Badin. He started Round 2 as the BHS head coach in the spring of 2016.
“The years I was at Lakota West, I was involved in every sport in some fashion, but coaching never left me,” Weisgerber said. “I started missing the coaching, and I started watching practices more. I was ready to come back.”
Here are some things of note in Weisgerber’s personal history:
• He grew up in Columbus, graduating from Hartley High School in 1971 and the University of Dayton in 1976. He was a four-year baseball player for the Flyers.
“I was better at baseball, but I loved playing basketball,” Weisgerber said. “I played intramurals at UD. In fact, we won the 6-foot & under league. It was all baseball players that were high school basketball players as well.”
• His first coaching/teaching job was at Chillicothe Bishop Flaget (it’s now a grade school) in 1976-77. He was there for three years.
“There were about 150 students in the entire four grades,” Weisgerber recalled. “I coached freshman basketball, varsity baseball, golf for two years, cross country for one year, taught phys ed and health and math and history, and I was athletic director too. That was right out of college, and I was doing everything. I wouldn’t change it for the world. It was busy, but it was fun.”
• He came to Badin in 1979-80 and was on Gary Trick’s basketball staff for two seasons. How did he end up at Badin?
“I was thinking you’d move three times before you settled,” Weisgerber said. “Three years at the first place, five years at the second place, then you’d settle.
“Going into that third year in Chillicothe, I was looking for someplace to go. When I was in high school, we played Badin in basketball, so I thought I’d send my information out there. I sent it out to a few other schools as well, and I got two responses that had openings — Badin and Newark Catholic. This was a better fit for me, so I came here.”
• His first year as Badin head coach resulted in a 20-5 campaign that ended with a run to the Class AA regional semifinals and an 80-72 loss to Dayton Roth. He would take three Ram teams to the Final Four, losing in the Division II state semifinals in 1996-97 (to Akron Buchtel) and 1997-98 (to Cleveland Benedictine in overtime).
• He was the head baseball coach at Badin for five years, leading the Rams to the Class AA state final in 1984. They lost to Coldwater 8-4 in the last game of his baseball coaching career.
“I knew I had to make a choice between basketball and baseball, and I just liked coaching basketball,” Weisgerber said. “Part of it was the uncertainty of baseball with the weather. That year we went to the state finals, we only played like 13 games in the regular season because we kept getting rained out. We were independent, so when we got rained out, people didn’t want to make up games because they had league games to make up.”
• His 1987-88 state championship basketball team went 28-0.
It was clearly the highlight of Weisgerber’s career accomplishment-wise. He likes to look at it as a textbook example of what consistent hard work can accomplish because that senior class had little success as freshmen.
“If you improve a little bit each day, that showed just how good you can become,” Weisgerber said.
• His career record in tournament games is 41-19. The Rams have been one-and-done only five times during Weisgerber’s tenure.
• He is retired and lives in West Chester Township with his wife, Sallie. Weisgerber said he remains in touch with many former players, even back to his Chillicothe days.
“I’ve always just loved coaching and working with kids, seeing what they can do on the court and what kind of gentlemen they become,” he said. “Seeing former players coming back and seeing what they’ve done and having them wanting to watch us play again, that makes me feel just as good or even better than the state championship.
“Coming to Badin was a great move for me. I was fortunate back in 1979 that Terry Malone and Father (Gerald) Haemmerle hired me. Without a doubt, getting 300 wins is great. It’s attributed to longevity and all the players and coaches I’ve had. But if we win Friday, it will definitely feel better to be 5-0 with this group.”
Weisgerber By The Numbers
Gerry Weisgerber has a career record of 299-166 in 21 seasons as Badin High School’s head boys basketball coach. Here are his year-by-year records:
1981-82: 20-5
1982-83: 16-7
1983-84: 12-8
1984-85: 12-9
1985-86: 10-13
1986-87: 19-4
1987-88: 28-0
1988-89: 19-4
1989-90: 16-8
1990-91: 16-7
1991-92: 13-8
1992-93: 10-11
1993-94: 5-15
1994-95: 11-10
1995-96: 16-6
1996-97: 20-6
1997-98: 21-6
1998-99: 8-14
2016-17: 9-15
2017-18: 14-10
2018-19: 4-0
About the Author