Serving Lucas, Ottawa, Sandusky and Wood Counties
Alex Geisel has put in the time as an assistant coach, and now he's looking to oversee his own program.
The 2009 Lake alum was recently hired to coach the varsity boys basketball program at Anthony Wayne, giving him the opportunity to take the reins at a new school.
Geisel has learned from two very good coaches in Mike Schoen at St. John’s and Lionel Armstead at Clay.
During his time at St. John’s, Geisel was in charge of all sixth through eighth grade basketball.
“That really helped me understand how important it is to pour into the youth and make sure they are developing correctly and learning how to play the right way," Geisel said. "Coach Schoen and I also both worked at the school full-time, so we spent a lot of hours together, and I tried to be a sponge and accumulate as much knowledge from him as possible. I played a role in bringing in all five of their starters for this season.”
At Clay, Geisel was a varsity assistant, helping to turn a program down on its luck into back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in over 30 years.
"I came on staff the same summer he was hired to take over what was known at the time as a losing program,” Geisel said. “The passion and love Coach L.A. has for the game of basketball is unmatched. I have never been around a coach that is in the gym more than he is.”
For Geisel, his basketball philosophy starts with playing good, hard-nosed defense.
"My general basketball philosophy is to create offense with defense,” he said. “We want to play with relentless, competitive effort defensively for all 32 minutes. We want to get stops, get out in transition, move the ball, and hunt good shots.
“We are teaching our players how to react to what is happening on the floor, rather than running a ton of set plays. We have a lot of guys who can create and score, and I want them to feel free to create scoring opportunities for themselves and each other without having to be robots on the floor.”
Geisel, who will welcome the likes of Zane Kudzia and Anthony Trombley to his team this season, earned a bachelor’s in psychology from BGSU following his graduation from Lake.
While with the Flyers, Geisel played basketball for the trio of Terry Tansel, Jim Welling and Jim Scherer.
Achter takes over at Western Michigan
Clay alum Kate Achter, who won four MAC championships at BGSU before graduating in 2008, has taken over as head coach of the Western Michigan University women’s basketball program.
And she isn’t the only local product joining the coaching staff as Oak Harbor alum Andrea Cecil, who played collegiately at BGSU and FGCU, joins her as an assistant. The former Rocket was also on her staff at Detroit Mercy the past three seasons.
Achter has had a rather successful coaching career in the collegiate ranks.
Over the past three seasons leading the Detroit Mercy women’s basketball program, she led a program that had won an average of two games annually over five years prior to her arrival to 32 wins over the past two years.
In her second season, she led UDM to a 17-15 record, marking the program's first winning season since 2016-17. Under her leadership, Detroit Mercy also earned its first postseason victory in the Horizon League Championship since 2017.
Prior to her time in Detroit, Achter spent six seasons as the head coach at Loyola Chicago, guiding the Ramblers from a two-win season in her first year to an 18-12 mark in her final campaign—the program's best record in over three decades. Her tenure saw Loyola earn its first-ever postseason berth in the Women's Basketball Invitational.
That success caught the attention of the administration at WMU, which hired Achter in March.
"I was honestly just having some postseason meetings with our staff, and I got a phone call,” Achter said. “I hadn't been paying attention to the job being open. They had an opportunity and wanted to know if I had any interest."
A number of things drew her to Kalamazoo, which is approximately 150 miles from Toledo.
"The leadership is exceptional, the university welcoming a new president who has an outstanding vision and an athletics-forward approach,” Achter said. “A lot of schools are downsizing and closing because of a lack of investment. The way they are choosing to invest in athletics and women's basketball is great.
“We'll have a new arena, which cost $500 million. No matter where you work, you want to feel like it's important. If you want to be professionally successful, we have the resources and the tools, and those things aligned. I believe we can win championships here."
Achter will look to help Western Michigan succeed through a challenging landscape in college athletics.
"I think the first problem is roster retention,” she said. “Everyone is experiencing the same problem. When I played, it wasn't a thing, you didn't transfer. Dealing with the agents on some fronts, NIL payments - instead of just dealing with chemistry and if you fit the right system. Now there's the financial piece."
