Memorable run for Wandro at Hoffman

Bill Wandro found it wasn't easy to leave Fremd back in the early 1990s.

It had been a wonderful place to work for 13 years. He loved teaching business and coaching basketball and soccer there.

But someone close to him and Hoffman Estates made some pretty convincing arguments that he would find plenty of happy days there.

So, Hoffman does not have just Bill Wandro to thank for one of the school's most successful athletic eras. Credit his wife Kathy, who just retired a month ago as a teacher there, with a pretty big assist.

“The opportunity was there and Kathy Wandro and (former athletic director) Tom Heidkamp were very convincing in bestowing the virtues of Hoffman Estates High School,” Wandro recalled fondly. “Fred Bryant (longtime teacher and coach) said some great things.

“I felt very fortunate I got the call saying I got the job.”

Twenty years later, that job is coming to a conclusion for the Iowa native. It has been one of the most successful tenures in the history of the Mid-Suburban League as Wandro takes a 337-225 record into Monday's regional opener against Lake Park at Glenbrook North.

There were Elite Eight trips in 1996 and 2004 that nearly ended up with final-four trophies. Wandro's second team to reach Peoria set an MSL single-season record for victories with 30.

There were two MSL titles and eight regional crowns at a program that was 71 games below .500 when Wandro arrived. It will be at least 40 games above break-even when he leaves.

“Very competitive,” said Pat Ambrose, who was an assistant for Wandro for three years before moving into his current job as Stevenson's head coach in 1999. “Don't let him get you wrong, Bill wants to win.

“But he's going to compete with class and do the best for kids and make everyone better around him.”

That doesn't apply to just players and coaches. Brian Staunton has been a part of the program for 18 years — first as a student manager and then as one of the best around at keeping track of game stats.

Keeping tabs on shots, rebounds and assists is nothing compared to six years in a job of handling 911 emergency calls.

“He's taught me so much, not only about the game,” Staunton said. “I owe a lot of the successes I've had in my personal life to things he taught me.

“He taught me how to take criticism and how to be part of a winning tradition. He took me back into this program (after a year at Western Illinois) when he really didn't have to. It's been an honor and privelege to serve for him as long as he's allowed me to.”

Building that tradition wasn't easy, however. But Wandrow was going to take what he had learned from people such as Fremd coach Mo Tharp and friend, former assistant coach and athletic director Jack Drollinger, put his stamp on it and make it work at Hoffman.

“My first year wasn't very productive,” Wandro said of a 9-17 season that will be one of only three that ended with a losing record. “But it was defining in terms of what we needed to do. It wasn't an easy transition and there wasn't a lot of acceptance to it right away.”

But he knew how he was going to succeed during a run that didn't include a single Division I basketball player.

“The team philosophy is something he always preached,” said Marty Manning, the all-area point guard on the 1996 Elite Eight team and now a successful head coach at Huntley. “It makes the team better if you rely on one another. It makes you a stronger team if you believe in one another.”

Which was evident in two vastly different teams achieving the same goal of reaching Peoria.

Two different teams, same Elite result.

The arc de triomphe that was one of the cornerstones of Hoffman's 2004 Elite Eight qualifier was not much of a firing line the first time it went to Peoria in 1996.

Marty Manning still laughs a bit enviously about the long-range differences of the two teams. His job was not to get 3 points at one crack when Hoffman made its first trip to state.

But it also underscores a coach who put together teams with the same kind of substance even if the styles varied greatly.

Manning's job was to pound the ball inside to 6-foot-7 future Indiana football lineman Nick Abruzzo, 6-3 strongman and all-area captain Mark Ganek and 6-5 Steve Gorman. Tony Reibel filled his role as the other guard as they won 27 games.

“He made sure the team knew what its strengths are and should be trying to accomplish at both ends of the floor,” Manning said. “We all knew as a team we should get the ball to Nick and Mark because of how good they were and how much of an advantage they had on other teams.”

And Wandro is quick to credit the three-year stint Bears legend Walter Payton spent as an assistant coach for helping form the foundation of a historic team.

“He saw kids he really liked and they saw the real him,” said Wandro, who attended Payton's Hall of Fame induction with then Hoffman athletic director Bill Sissel. “He had such a way with people, it made them feel good about themselves. That's when we started calling the concept, ‘It's about team.'”

That team came up just a point short in the quarterfinals against Westinghouse. But the bar had been set.

Then a group came along to raise it in 2003-04.

A team built around the stellar guard play, shooting and leadership of the two-time all-area captain duo of Jonny Reibel and Bryan Mead. Each of them hit more 3s than the entire 1996 team combined.

Branden Jung provided the inside game and Jesse Farder was the defensive stopper. Jamal Roper's best days were still ahead as a sophomore starter and Wandro lauded senior Steve Zuniga's unsung acceptance of a reserve role.

The magic number was 30 in one of the peak years of MSL basketball. It still is the magic number of wins by a team that came up just 5 points short in Peoria to West Aurora and fellow Iowa native, colleague and friend Gordie Kerkman.

“I think that was even a more amazing thing, what they did,” Wandro said. “What makes the 30-win season so cool is they perfected it that year.”

How well does the formula work? Ambrose's successful tenure at Stevenson includes a fourth-place state finish in 2007 when his only double-figure scorer averaged 12½ points a night.

“He was a big influence on me and I learned a lot and picked up a lot,” said Ambrose, who spent a year at the varsity, sophomore and freshman level to get a feel for running a program. “I learned to compete with Bill. He works hard and does it the right way.

“He prepared me well. He still mentors me today in a lot of ways.”

The next chapter

At a night in his honor back in December, Wandro admitted he has mellowed and laughed that ex-players of more recent vintage are more inclined to come back and visit.

“He was extremely demanding and we always say he loosened up after we went downstate,” Manning said. “The first few years he felt like he had to fight and make sure we did things properly and were conditioned more than the other team so we could play at a high level.

“I think he almost had to do that to change the culture of the program. I had been watching Hoffman since the fourth grade, and that's not to say it had been a bad program, but it just didn't have that level of success until he came along.”

It was part of a memorable era of legendary rivalry battles with Conant and Tom McCormack and Schaumburg and Bob Williams.

There are the memories of great support that includes former principal Dennis Garber, former assistants Tim Cannon, Danny Davis, Paul Petrulakis and Bob Coakley and the Mead and Reibel families.

“This year has been extraordinary,” Wandro said of the outporing of support.

On the court it's been his toughest season with a 6-19 record. But Wandro is proud of how a young and inexperienced group has worked to improve and learn how to play the right way.

After all, as he put it, “basketball is my passion.”

Wandro plans to take a year off, spend more time with his wife Kathy and then probably get back in the game somewhere.

Manning would love to have him on his bench — as would some of his Fox Valley Conference rivals. For good reason considering the legacy he built at Hoffman.

“Not only how to be better basketball players but to be better people,” Staunton said.

“I hope when people think of Hoffman in the future,” Wandro said, “they remember that the people associated with the program through the years did the best they could to give kids something to build on to make life as they get older a little bit easier.”

All thanks to a decision Bill Wandro made that wasn't easy but turned out better than most would have ever imagined 20 years ago.