Stewart: Hale girls basketball team takes coach, school on a memorable ride

Joy.

That’s the prevailing impression I was left with the last time I saw George Sotiros. Last month the West Allis Hale girls basketball team had just scored a close win at Germantown and the Huskies’ girls basketball coach was positively beaming.

The Huskies were in the midst of their best season in nearly two decades and their coach clearly was enjoying the ride.

“Sometimes it’s a dream,” he said. “It’s fun.”

It’s safe to assume that smile on his face has grown wider. Last week Hale clinched a share of the Greater Metro Conference title and the Twittersphere showered the coach and team with love.

You can’t help but feel good for them.

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In sports we love to see rags-to-riches stories and love to cheer for the underdogs. In high school sports, however, those kinds of stories and teams have become harder and harder to find. In league after league, the same two or three schools often lead the charge. The gap between the have and have nots is hard to close.

Hale, however, reminds us that there is hope for the Davids of the world.

“I’ve been here eight years and in those eight years softball won the conference in 2011, wrestling (won) in 2012, 2013 and now 2018 and girls basketball (in) 2018,” Hale athletic director Eliot Kramsky said. "So five conference championships in eight years and most of the schools we compete against in our conference, they win four or five every year. We’re not taking this lightly.”

West Allis is one of those communities where people boast they're from and Hale is a school where many of its coaches have some tie to the school, be it as an alumni or as a parent whose kids attend or went there. It's a proud place that has struggled athletically.

The football team didn’t win a conference game this past season and hasn’t been to the playoffs since 2008. The boys soccer team won one league game in 2017 and has finished above .500 just once in the past five seasons. Baseball has been in the bottom half of the league in recent years.

The girls volleyball team bucked that trend, reaching the sectional final the past two seasons, though in league play it has been in the middle of the pack. Softball has had some success, too, finishing second or better three times in the past seven years. Wrestling has also enjoyed success and last year produced an individual state champion in senior Peyton Mocco.

Overall, however, competing in the Greater Metro has been an uphill climb.

In comparison to other schools in the league, Hale sits at the lower end of many of the socio-economic factors that can play a key role in athletic success. The differences in that regard between its students and the rest of the schools in the conference was why it requested a move out of the Greater Metro during the most recent realignment talks.

When the school’s request was denied, it had to go to the drawing board.

“I sat down with my coaches and said we can’t whine, we can’t complain,” Kramsky said. “Now we’ve got to figure out what we can do to get better. We have to figure out as a coaching staff and me as an athletic director and us as a district, how are we able to compete with these other schools … What are they doing that we’re not.”

How does a school make up ground?

You start junior programs in sports like football, basketball, baseball and wrestling and put them under the umbrella of the high school’s athletic department the way Hale did last year. You introduce the little kids in the community to the games with summer camps. You support the older ones by having more open gyms during the summer. You make sure all your coaches are taking advantage of their summer contact days.

There are no shortcuts in this regard.

“Coaches work 12 months out of the year now,” Kramsky said. “That’s good and bad news. The good news is that you get to work with your kids year round. The bad news is that you’re working year-round for about the same amount of pay you were making 25 years ago. But our coaches do it because they love kids and they love the sport. They’re not here for the money.”

The big payoff comes with seasons like the Hale girls are enjoying.

Like many of the Hale coaches, Sotiros is a West Allis guy. His four kids went to the school; his youngest, KellyAnn, is a senior on the team.. He served on the school board before taking over as coach at the start of the 2012-'13 seasons.

He, along with assistant Bill Barbeau, invested the time and slowly that commitment has paid off.

Each year the program’s overall win total increased, while its conference win total hovered around three or four victories. When five of the team’s top six scorers from last year returned this year, Hale had the talent and experience to shoot to the top of the Greater Metro, while taking their coach and community with them.

“We don’t have a superstar, we just don’t,” Sotiros said. “It’s so much fun seeing these kids bond together. I’m speechless because it’s so much fun.”

Mark Stewart can be reached at mstewart@journalsentinel.com or on Twitter at MarkStewartMJS