Published: Dec. 1, 2015
Former Suns coach Riehl passes away
Led East to its lone state title in 1984
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Former West Bend East girls basketball coach and Hall of
Famer Rick Riehl died Sunday night. He was 67.
In October, Riehl was diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease, a rare degenerative brain disorder that can resemble dementia and
Alzheimers, but progresses more rapidly.
According to the Mayo Clinic, there is an estimated one
diagnosed case per 1 million people each year, most often in older adults.
“The man never lost his passion for East High School, our
students, our staff and the community,” said Ted Neitzke, West Bend School
District superintendent. “He’ll be missed.”
Riehl led the Suns girls basketball team from 1978-88,
compiling a 154-65 record in that span. He led the team to the 1984 state
championship and was the state’s coach of the year.
He coached for more than 30 years and 60 sports seasons at
East, compiling a 334-169 record, including 95 victories in eight seasons as
the Suns’ junior varsity baseball coach.
Riehl also taught in the West Bend School District for more
than 30 years and was later an athletic department administrator at Concordia
University in Mequon for more than a decade.
“He was very passionate and helpful to me a number of
times,” Neitzke said. “He left a legacy.”
Arguably, his greatest legacy was the Wisconsin Coaches
Scouting Service, which he started in 1983. The WCSS is a basketball camp for
boys and girls from second grade through high school, teaching the fundamentals
of the game.
A 1984 West Bend News article detailed why Riehl started the
scouting service.
“It turned out that only seven girls in Wisconsin had
received Division I scholarships in 1982, another 12 were given ‘full rides’ in
1983,” Riehl said in the article. “That number seemed woefully low when
considering the fact that Wisconsin has so many schools. The odds of a girl
receiving a scholarship for basketball figured out to be about one in 200.”
To find out the statistics, Riehl mailed more than 400
letters to coaches of high school girls basketball in Wisconsin.
Riehl said in the article he was “immensely frustrated at
(girls’) inability to get any scholarship funds.”
Since then, Riehl’s service has given girls basketball
players in Wisconsin a chance to get to the collegiate level.
“This project has afforded me the opportunity and incentive
to find those players, get the information to the universities and upgrade the
opinion of this state’s basketball program,” Riehl said in the article.
He added, “Integrity, creditability and validity are the
goals we seek in providing this service.”
More than 500 former and current Division I girls basketball
players participated in WCSS sessions. One of the most notable was Sonja
Henning.
Henning graduated from Racine Horlick in 1987 as the state’s
all-time leading scorer (2,236). She was the Wisconsin Player of the Year in
1987, then the National High School Player of the Year, before becoming the
NCAA Player of the Year while leading Stanford to the National Championship in
1989.
Another one was Sandy Botham, a Madison West graduate, who
went on to play on a scholarship at Notre Dame. Later, Botham went into
coaching and led the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee women’s program from
1996-2012 where she was a three-time Horizon League Coach of the Year and the
second-winningest coach in school history.
In the weeks that followed his diagnosis, Riehl was inducted
onto the West Bend Athletics Wall of Fame.
Riehl will be inducted into the Wisconsin Basketball Coaches
Association Hall of Fame at a later date. The hope was to do the presentation
at an East girls basketball game this season.
It is unclear when the ceremony will take place.
WBCA Executive Director Jerry Petitgoue said Riehl’s
induction is “long overdue.”
On Nov. 7, Riehl was recognized by Concordia when the school
renamed the press box at the football stadium in his honor.
“The Concordia University- Wisconsin community mourns
together with Rick’s wife, Donna, his wonderful family and many friends,” said
Patrick Ferry, Concordia’s president. “Truly, Rick’s was a life that mattered.
He made a difference and had an impact on so many people as a teacher, coach
and mentor. He lived out our university’s mission of ‘helping students develop
on mind, body and spirit for service to Christ in the church and world.’ Now he
is in the nearer presence of Jesus celebrating the ultimate victory. We do not
grieve without hope. Rick will truly be missed.”
Riehl is survived by his wife, Donna, and three children,
Tara, Troy and Tyler.
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