‘It took a lot of nerve’

RIVER VALLEY and OZARK AREA — Steve Wiedower has coached everything from junior high to NCAA Division I basketball teams, but family reasons have him settled at Russellville High School in 2009.

After six years working under University of Arkansas at Little Rock women’s coach Joe Foley, Wiedower, who graduated from Arkansas State University in 1987, is the new Lady Cyclone coach.

“One of the main reasons I wanted to do this is my daughters are going to be playing, and I knew when this opportunity came about I would be able to spend more time with my family,” he said. “I really enjoyed what I was doing in college, but I spent a lot of time away recruiting.”

Older daughter Kaylee is 16 and a sophomore for the Lady Cyclones. Kenzie is an eighthgrader.

“When you’re coaching your own kids, there are good and bad times, but I’ll never get another opportunity to spend that time with them, and I wanted to take advantage of that,” he said. “I heard so many good things about Russellville and the community and how they support the team, and I felt like it was something I wanted to do.”

Wiedower graduated from Greenbrier High School in 1983 after earning all-state honors his last two season. He was an AAU All-American with the Arkansas Wings and was named MVP of the Arkansas High School All-Star Game in 1983.

He played two seasons at Oklahoma City University, earning all-freshman team honors in the Midwestern City Conference, and then transferred to ASU, finishing his career in that historic NIT matchup with the University of Arkansas in ’87. He left ASU as the school’s single-season 3-point leader and ranked among the NCAA’s top 10 in 3-point percentage as a senior. He earned all-Southland Conference honors and his degree in physical education.

He said he had always wanted to coach. His first job was at Morrilton Junior High, where he coached both boys and girls teams for a year.

“When I first got out of college, I really thought I only wanted to coach boys,” he said. “Then I started helping my uncle, who had a daughter(Amy Wiedower) who played at South Side Bee Branch and ended up playing at [the University of Central Arkansas]. Her dad wanted me to help him coach some AAU girls, so I got involved with them a little bit and got my first taste of coaching girls. I enjoyed it.”

After a year at Morrilton, he returned to his alma mater, Greenbrier, to coach junior girls and boys for a year and then senior girls and boys for three.

He then left coaching and worked with his father in the dairy business for four years before returning to Greenbrier to coach boys for four seasons. Altogether, he was 229-111 at the three schools, and his teams won five conference and district titles.

He was named 5AA-North Conference Coach of the Year in 1991 and ’92.

Along the way, he earned his master’s degree in educational administration from UCA and then served as assistant principal at Greenbrier Junior High from 1999-2002 and assistant principal at Pleasant Grove Middle School in Texarkana, Texas, in 2002-03.

That’s when Foley, who had recruited Greenbrier’s Dawn Grell to Arkansas Tech while Wiedower was her coach, reentered his life.

“He was wanting to get back into coaching,” Foley remembered. “He missed it, but we didn’t have any openings, so he worked for a year as a graduate assistant, and then he moved onup (to an assistant position).”

Foley, who had also coached at Morrilton early in his coaching career and also thought he would wind up coaching boys, made his reputation as coach of Arkansas Tech’s Golden Suns, who won NAIA national championships in 1992 and ’93 and finished runner-up in NCAA Division II in 1999.

In 16 seasons, his teams finished 456-81. In the old Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference of the NAIA and the Gulf South Conference of NCAA Division II, they went 216-28. Under Foley, the Golden Suns recorded six 30-win seasons and won at least 20 games every year of his tenure.

They won 14 conference championships, reached the NCAA D-II or NAIA Final Four seven times, made six appearances in the NCAA Division II tournament and advanced to the Division II Elite Eight twice.

At UALR, Foley has led the Trojans to three consecutive 20-win seasons and three straight seasons ranked No. 3 in the nation in scoring defense. He is 559-158 overall, including 103-77 at UALR.

To put his record in perspective, UALR’s former coach was just 24-87 in four seasons.

Wiedower helped Foley and the Trojans win back-to-back Sun Belt Conference West Division titles and make WNIT appearances the last two seasons.

According to the UALR media guide, Wiedower’s duties included recruiting, on-floor coaching, scouting reports and monitoring the Trojans’ weight and conditioning program.

Foley indicated he did much more.

“Steve was the calm person of the staff,” he said. “He was the one that always gave confidence to the girls. I’d get onto them, and he’d come in behind me and tell them, ‘This is what he’s wanting.’ We played good cop/bad cop. He was the glue that kept everybody from getting too down on themselves. He’s just a great motivator, and the kids love him.”

Wiedower said it was difficult for him to leave UALR.

“We had everything down, and Coach Foley hated for meto go, but he also understood it was a good opportunity for me to do what I wanted to do with my life,” he said.

But he brought with him all of his experiences.

“I learned so much from him,” Wiedower said. “He knows what he’s doing, no doubt about that. I learned that to be successful, you’ve got to work at it, and how he pushes his players and teaches them different things.

“We’re going to do a lot of the same stuff [at Russellville]. We won’t be able to do everything to the extent they do in college, but we’re going to play a good, hard-nosed man-toman defense. We’ll try to teach them how to play the game a little bit.”

Perhaps more than anyone, Foley understands everything that went into his friend’s decision.

“It took a big guy for him to step aside, because he was moving up on this level,” Foley said. “He had established a lot of recruiting ties. People knew him all over the country. But the main thing was he wanted to spend time with his girls before they get out of high school, and I don’t blame him. It’s tough on any college coach who has a family. He wanted to do that fora few years and get to coach his daughters, spend the day with them and be home at night, and I respect him for that.

“It took a lot of nerve to do what he did, but it shows how committed he is to his family. He’s a great guy. I think it’s a great opportunity for Russellville and for Steve and his family.”

River Valley Ozark, Pages 150 on 11/08/2009

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