Winter Coach of the Year: In his own unique way, Medina's Chris Hassinger reaches, teaches his players

Medina seniors Corey Tripp, Christian Howard and Brandon Geschke witnessed it so many times they learned to identify all the warning signs. First, the pacing along the sideline increased and speeded up. Then the right arm frantically pointed one direction, the left arm in another, instructions being shouted to on-court players the entire time. When those instructions weren't properly followed, the foot stomping began. Next came an incredulous look at one of his assistants, be it J.T. Sturm, Bill Geschke, Ryan Heath, Carl Walcher or Drew Hassinger. In extreme circumstances, the whiteboard used to diagram plays became endangered. Five substitutes simultaneously headed to the scorer's table in the heat of battle was, as Brandon Geschke put it, "never a good sign," and a timeout meant the moment was at hand. Boys basketball coach Chris Hassinger was about to explode, but seasoned players like Tripp, Howard and Geschke grew to love that aspect of the program's emotional, energetic, competitive and caring leader. "It was tough when I first came in as a freshman, but he tells you he loves you afterward," All-Ohio point guard Tripp said. "I don't listen to how he's saying it. I listen to what he's saying. That's how I looked at it." The relationship between Hassinger and his players was so strong during a coronavirus-threatened 2020-21 season that the 49-year-old, who led the Bees to the third regional championship game in program history and fourth in Medina County annals, has been named The Gazette's Winter Coach of the Year. "He's so energetic and he loves the game of basketball," All-Gazette center Howard said. "He's up at 4 in the morning doing game plans, watching films. He brings a lot of energy to the floor. Once he gets fired up, we get fired up behind him." Hassinger is always fired up, but there's a method to what sometimes mistakenly appears to be madness to some uninformed outsiders. In one game this season, Hassinger took a full timeout and spent the entire break yelling at four-year letterman Geschke, who had done absolutely nothing wrong. Hassinger and Geschke knew this, but it was the coach's way of reaching younger players without them going into a shell. Still, when the huddle broke, Hassinger pulled Geschke aside and apologized. Geschke just smiled and said, "Yep." "Sometimes I get so mad about stuff, I have to get it off my chest or I'm going to blow," Hassinger said. "The seniors love it, because they know what's going on." So do Hassinger's assistants, whom he repeatedly credited for helping the Bees reach their fourth regional tournament in his seven years as head coach of the boys program. Sturm, a 2001 Medina graduate who played for the Bees when Hassinger was an assistant to Jody Peters, has seen it all. "Oh, boy," he said when asked about Hassinger's competitiveness. "He's very competitive. I mean, very competitive. That's one of the special things about him, and he instills it in our guys. It rubs off." So, too, does the boundless energy, which helps explain why the 6-foot Hassinger weighs just 160 pounds. "It's off the charts," Sturm said. "He can be in his office taking a nap and the next second he is running around the gym. That's him. That's how he's always been since I met him when I was in elementary school. I don't know where he gets it from because he doesn't drink coffee or energy drinks, but he's always got it." And he's always had it. Not long after graduating from Wadsworth High in 1990, Hassinger decided to build a basketball court outside the home of his parents, Neil and Pat, who knew immediately this wasn't going to be a run-of-the-mill setup, as did their four older, calmer children, Barry, Mike, Cheryl and Craig. If the youngest Hassinger was going to build a court, he was going to do it the right way. So down came a pine tree that was 50 feet tall. Up went a permanent hoop at one end of the court and an adjustable one at the other. That wasn't good enough, though, so Hassinger, who had a part-time job working for the Wadsworth Electric Department, climbed onto the roof of his parents' house, ran wires into various parts of the home and installed lights above the court. "It would be midnight and my mom would come out and yell at us because my friends and I were still playing," he said. "The neighbors were trying to sleep and the lights were still on. They must have hated us." After being hired as a physical education teacher in the Medina school system, Hassinger got his first taste of coaching when Pat O'Brien asked him to be his basketball assistant at Claggett Middle School in 1994. "We had (future Medina High athletic stars) Chip Miller and Mike Chase and Jeff Tomko and Josh Lenaburg and all those guys," Hassinger said. "We had such good players, we just dominated at the middle school level." The next year, Hassinger became the eighth-grade coach at Root Middle School. That team promptly went 2-13, as Hassinger remembers it, but there was one bright spot: Neighborhood rival Claggett, which featured future Ohio co-Mr. Basketball winner Tony Stockman, was not on the schedule. The following season, Hassinger became the head coach at Claggett, which went 4-10, meaning after two years in charge he had a 6-23 record. Whether at the middle school level, as a varsity assistant to Peters or in charge of his own high school program, there's been one losing season in the 25 years since (8-17 in 2017-18 with the boys varsity). In four years as the varsity girls coach at Medina, Hassinger went 63-26 and helped the Bees win three league titles. In his seven years in charge of the boys team, he's 114-66, for an overall record of 177-92 in 11 varsity seasons. The enthusiasm has never waned. In fact, it's probably increased, if that's possible. "It's limitless," All-Gazette shooting guard Geschke said. "There's not a cap to the energy level he has. He just goes and goes and goes all day, every day." Hassinger knows no other way. Nor does he want to. "I have to coach the way I coach," he said. "A lot of it comes from competition. I don't want to lose at anything. I don't want to lose a possession, a rebound, a game. "Sometimes I go home and just watch the game so I can enjoy it, especially when we win, because I can't enjoy the game while I'm coaching it. It's all segments to me, and I want to win every segment. Everything is a competition to me." As Sturm noted, that rubs off on Hassinger's players, but it's always put into its proper context. Winning is fun, yes, but at Medina no great joy is derived from beating a vastly inferior opponent by 40 points. Much more is gained, in the big picture, by scheduling the best of the best and sometimes losing. That's why Medina's 18-7 record this season is extremely misleading. Three of the Bees' losses were to Greater Cleveland Conference champion Mentor, which beat Medina in the regional finals to reach the Division I state tournament. The others were to St. Ignatius, which also made the D-I state tournament, D-IV state tourney participant Richmond Heights, D-II regional finalist Buchtel and the International Sports Academy, which isn't a member of the Ohio High School Athletic Association and had a roster filled with future college players. "(Hassinger) wanted to prepare us," Howard said. "Those (non-league) games we had against Ignatius, Richmond Heights, Buchtel, they came down to the wire. That's what he wanted, because every tournament game is like that. It was to get us ready." Hassinger's players have become a lot like him over the years. They thrive on competition, feed off his energy and are grateful for being pushed so hard because they know he truly cares about their future. "He's not even like a coach, really," Gazette MVP Tripp said. "Playing at Medina is a family thing. It wasn't a team. We thought of ourselves as a family, and he was a father figure to a lot of kids on our team. "He cares about everyone. I always see him looking out for kids, even kids that aren't playing basketball. He's always in the hallways talking to kids, listening to them. Everyone loves him at the school. I've never seen him not excited, not running around joking with everybody, having fun. That's just who he is." And who he will continue to be. "I've always had energy, excitement," Hassinger said. "I like to be silly and have fun. My favorite teachers in school were the ones who could get the best out of me and fine tune me to be successful. I love taking kids that are rough around the edges and help make them kids that flourish in life. That's the part that excites me. "I don't burn out on anything. It's me. It's how I go rabout everything. Our family bakery (Ann's Pastry Shop in Wadsworth), teaching, coaching, it's how I go. I'll sleep when I die. You've got to enjoy life. When there's love involved in something, you're going to work really hard at it. When I don't love it, that's when I'll quit." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.