Paradise enjoying new challenges

The basketball questionnaires have been sent out. Some coaches have already filled theirs out and sent them back.

This is not a chore Ryan Paradise will miss.

With the high school basketball season officially kicking in, the former Marmion coach will find some things he misses and others he won't since leaving the program July 24 after three years as Cadets varsity head coach.

He left to become full-time programming director at Basketball Paradise, the basketball skills development company in Naperville, working alongside his father, Fran, brother, Patrick, and Marmion assistant Josh Wisch. In August Joe Currie was named Paradise's successor, a 1982 Marmion graduate and program assistant for four different Marmion varsity coaches.

Ryan Paradise is still a young man, a 2003 Naperville Central graduate, but he's finding out now what many retired coaches quickly discover. They miss the high school game.

"I definitely do, especially right around this time of year," he said. "But I've been so busy."

Some of it great, some of it not so great.

On Oct. 3, while teaching a point guard how to keep a defender off balance, Paradise put his foot down to accelerate and heard a pop. He didn't feel anything, so he figured he blew out his sneaker. Instead it was his Achilles tendon.

Paradise had surgery and two weeks later, Oct. 25, married his fiancee, the former Jenin Robinson, a three-time state champion hurdler at Plano who met Paradise while both were athletes at Northern Illinois University. Paradise walked down the aisle at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago aided by a pair of crutches.

The couple will honeymoon in Puerto Vallarta but not till March because, well, it's basketball season. This week Paradise had 11 travel teams of fourth- through eighth-graders beginning practice.

At Marmion, he would be assessing the new talent.

"It's the worst part, I think, of the year because there's so much outside of the actual game going on," he said. "It becomes a lot. It's part of the program, but you've got to deal with guys coming in from fall sports, are they still in the playoffs? Are they in shape?"

He went on.

"Who have we lost? Maybe we have no team chemistry ..."

We're still a couple weeks removed from actual competition, which is what Paradise really will miss at the high school level - "the thinking part of the game," he said, the strategy, calling plays, scouting.

This part of the season involves fundamentals and cutting players, "the absolute worst part of coaching, breaking that news," Paradise said.

Then he remembers how Marmion closed last season. A "refreshing" lack of egos, he said, who went on a 12-6 stretch and came within a basket of a regional title.

"All these things are challenging, but now that I'm removed they're among the most fun because you don't think about it but by February, when you think back and see where the team is, good or bad, that's where the foundation is built," Paradise said.

"If you've got team chemistry late in the year, or are clicking on all cylinders, when you're in the middle of all that stuff in mid-November that's where all these things are built."

Tapering

Out of nowhere on Thursday updated girls swimming rankings arrived from the desk of Kevin Auger, Evanston's coach.

He has Rosary, last year's ninth-place state finisher, ranked second behind Loyola, which took fourth last season.

Other locals were St. Charles East and St. Charles North at Nos. 8-9. Auger ranked 2013 state champion New Trier sixth.

Sectionals will be held Nov. 15 with the state finals Nov. 21-22 at Evanston. Rosary competes at the Metea Valley sectional while St. Charles North hosts its own sectional with the Saints also competing.

Good neighbor

The fall athletic awards are starting to trickle in from colleges. First, let's salute a local Illinois State student-athlete honored Oct. 26 by her college's annual "Reggie Awards" celebrating athletic and academic success.

Redbirds golfer Hayley Guyton, a senior out of Kaneland, was given the "Good Neighbor Award" regarding athletics, personal conduct and service to others. Guyton also was a nominee for the school's Linda Herman Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year award.

Burgess beautiful this time of year

Geneva football coach Rob Wicinski likes those Friday night lights, but he came around to Saturday afternoons.

Daily Herald correspondent and columnist Dave Heun cover the Vikings' first-round Class 7A win over Hersey Nov. 1 in Geneva. He reported that Wicinski wanted to hug his coaches who talked him into playing Saturday instead of Friday, which turned out to offer 25-degree wind chills and swirling snow flurries in some areas.

"I was really pressing for a Friday night game, but this is gorgeous," Wicinski said. "This is what Saturday afternoon games are supposed to look like."

He'll see what Geneva feels like this week for Saturday's second-round game against Rockton Hononegah. The preliminary forecast on weather.com is for a high of 42 degrees, partly sunny with 20 percent chance of rain and 20-mph winds out of the northwest.

doberhelman@dailyherald.com

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