100 Years of Minnesota State High School Tournament Basketball 2: Girls Coaches

Last week the MSHSL announced an ongoing feature on its Web site, that is, the "best of" the Minnesota state basketball tournaments. This is all in honor of the 100th year of high school tournament play. Each week the MSHSL will announce the "best of" in one category or another. This week it's the girls coaches. Their top 5 is as follows. The comments are mine. To see the MSHSL's commentary on this, visit http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/index.asp and click on 100 Years of BB in the upper left.

MSHSL's Top 5 Girls Coaches

Jerry Cool, Little Falls
Terry Culhane, Milroy, Tracy-Milroy, Marshall
Mike Dreier, New London-Spicer
Myron Glass, Rochester Lourdes
Faith Johnson Patterson, Mpls. North, DeLaSalle

It's very hard to disagree with this list. The 5 have over 50 state tournament appearances and 23 titles among them. By the same token, it's very hard to leave coaches like Andy Berkvam, Brian Cosgriff and Terry Hunst off the list. Well, the MSHSL goes on to list....

Other Notable Coaches

Andy Berkvam, Lakeville, Lakeville North
Brian Cosgriff, Hopkins
Ray Finley, Blake, Breck, Providence
Terry Hunst, Bloomington Jefferson
Willie Taylor, Mounds View, St. Paul Central

Here's another 14 state championships represented. But here again, once I name these fellows, it's hard for me to draw the line above the following:

Doug Boe, Burnsville
Phil Frerk, St. Louis Park
Gary Gillis, Storden-Jeffers, Red Rock Central
Dave Preller, Woodbury

Still the 2 lists the MSHSL has published are excellent lists. And while nobody can deny that Myron Glass is the dean of his profession in Minnesota with those 8 state titles, 2 of my personal favorites would have to be Faith Patterson, with whom I serve on a board and who I have found to be as energetic when it comes to high school basketball as a person can be, and Brian Cosgriff of Hopkins. Cos takes a lot of hits because the Hopkins girls and boys just have too much success and they wear people out. But he promotes the hell out of the game and is unfailingly helpful and forthcoming if you want to promote high school basketball and want some help.

This is nothing against any of the others, but these are 2 people I know and admire a lot.