Oak Creek selects Roeglin as its new coach
It was already going to be a rebuilding year for the Oak Creek boys basketball team, but the sobering reality awaiting new head coach Nick Roeglin is something nobody could have anticipated.
Roeglin, 35, a longtime assistant with the highly successful girls basketball program at Oak Creek, has been asked to step in with only a few weeks’ notice after former coach Mike Jossie was placed on administrative leave and was charged Oct. 13 with two counts of sexual assault of a child.
“The basketball side of it is the easy part,” Roeglin said. “I know that this isn’t what they were planning on dealing with for their season, but there’s no looking back. We’d change everything if we could.
“The expectation is to compete. There are zero excuses, it doesn’t matter if the (new coach) transition happened the day before the season. The expectations are that we’re going to compete and be the best team we’re capable of being.”
Oak Creek went 21-3 in a Southeast Conference championship season last winter, doing so with a roster littered with now-graduated seniors. Only five players on last year’s roster are scheduled to return.
With practice starting Nov. 13 and the first game in early December, the program didn’t have much time to find a new coach. Roeglin, who spent eight years on the girls staff under coach Steve Hluchnik, helped pilot the program to the 2014 state championship and another state appearance in 2016.
Roeglin, a West Allis Central graduate who played football at Wisconsin Lutheran College (graduated in 2004) and has taught special education in the Oak CreekFranklin School District for 11 years, said he has aspired to be a head coach in his career, though the circumstances have forced a tempered enthusiasm.
“I don’t have any illusions that I understand the game of boys basketball like I did girls basketball,” Roeglin said. “The big appeal to going over to the boys side with this program was just the attitude, the effort, the way these guys are wired to work. They are so hardworking.”