Riverside football coach reaches milestone.
Someone mentioned the significance of Saturday’s victory to Milwaukee Riverside football coach Patrick Wagner, but he quickly brushed it aside.
One-hundred wins? Not a big deal, he said.
“I was kind of aware of it, but I don’t pay attention to that,” Wagner said. “I just care about the win.”
The Tigers coach reached the milestone Saturday with his team’s 35-0 victory over Milwaukee Hamilton, and yes, it is a big deal.
The win sets up the Tigers, who are 5-2 overall and 5-0 in the City, for a winner-take-all showdown with Milwaukee Bay View (5-2, 5-0) for the City Richardson Division title. And for area coaches, it puts him in the company of just 11 other active area coaches who have reached the mark. Only 10 other coaches in southeast Wisconsin can match his 17 years as a head coach.
That’s an amazing run anywhere, but it is especially impressive in the City Conference where the challenge of maintaining a program is harder than in districts that can rely on a steady feeder system or have kids who are far from the ills of the city.
I’ve spoken to and seen enough inner-city coaches in various sports whose work goes well beyond the normal parameter of coaching. There are a lot issues to iron out behind the scenes.
It wears on some of them.
“I think it’s the same with everybody else who lasts long; you kind of look at it as a calling. You really don’t want to leave what you do,” he said when asked why he has stuck with the job so long.
“That’s the best way I can put it. It’s just Riverside’s home and I just want to teach and coach football and hang out with kids, just try to mold them into the best young people we can build them into.”
Wagner is 100-70 (.588) with six conference / division titles. The winning percentage would be better were he not so ambitious with his non-conference schedule. Even most of his better teams were .500 or worst in those contests.
The goal has been to use those games to tougher the team up for the playoffs. Fourteen times they’ve made it. This will be their 13th straight season.
The highlight of that stretch were state semifinal appearances in 2006 and 2011 when the team’s play in those early-season non-conference games gave Wagner a sense of what was to come.
“The only way to find that out is if I go 6-3 every year,” he said. “I could have scheduled somebody who isn’t as fast or as big as we are, but I want a challenge.”
His kids have run the gamut. There are special talents like current NFL players Eric Murray of the Kansas City Chiefs and Brandon Brooks of the Philadelphia Eagles to solid players like Chris Cummings, who played Division III ball and is an assistant coach on Wagner's staff. There have been kids from stable twoparent homes and others with a parent in jail.
A tough situation is just a call away. Very early one morning a few years ago, Wagner got a call from a player whose father had just been murdered.
He estimates he has sent about 50 kids to play some level of college ball.
“Most of the time the kids are trying to find something positive to do when you think about it,” he said.
The program looks much different now than when Wagner joined it 20 years ago as an assistant. Back then Tech was still ruling the City. Riverside was at the opposite end of the spectrum, fresh off one of the area’s longest losing streaks.
In his first season, 2001, the Tigers were division champions, but that was followed by four straight losing seasons before the big breakthrough in 2006.
“I’ve been fortunate. I’m in a great school, worked with some great people and I’ve had some phenomenal players, some great student-athletes who have made it fun,” Wagner said. “Right now I’m pretty blessed because I have a good staff right now. A lot of those guys played for me at one point in time.”
They’ve helped Wagner coach the Tigers to the brink of another division title. As far as year-toyear goals, that’s probably it for the 47-year-old.
The goal is to win and keep that City Conference title.
“I don’t like losing," he said. "I want to win conference titles year-in and year-out. I’d love to win a state final, but also I know how hard that is. If I can win the City every year, I’m pretty happy.”