RallyNorth.net

Stoic Woelfel built a dynasty which was second to none

Tuesday, March, 25 By Alan Siegel
Staff writer

Keri Guertin remembers the day Haverhill High coach Kevin Woelfel threw her out of practice.

She didn't like the way he was refereeing an intrasquad scrimmage, and in a moment of frustration, she threw a basketball at a teammate.

Big mistake.

"I was sent packing," she said.

Guertin (now Keri Ryan) immediately learned her lesson.  

"What that made me do was think, 'Well, I'll show him what he's missing,'" said Guertin, the 1992 Eagle-Tribune MVP who played at Merrimack College. "You had to earn your way back. That's how he kept us motivated."  

For the better part of his 25 seasons on the bench, Woelfel got more out of his players than any other coach in the area.

"He wanted to get the best out of all of us," said Debbie Stanley, who played on Woelfel's first team in 1983-84. "That's what he pushed for."

Woelfel leaves his post with an impressive resume. His Hillies won six Division 1 state titles (1987, 1989, 1992, 1994-96), eight Eastern Massachusetts titles and 12 Merrimack Valley Conference titles.

"That's where you wanted to play," Guertin said. "You knew what the end result would be: A state championship."

Woelfel's career record of 402-154 is the area's second best behind Methuen High legend Mimi Hyde, who went 417-120.

The Rangers and the Hillies enjoyed one of the state's great rivalries in the 1980s and 1990s. Neighboring schools, they were year-in and year-out arguably the top two teams in the state. Hyde looks back on those days fondly.

"It was great to have a person you knew could compete every single year," she said. "Even if our teams were in last place, it was still a dogfight."

Hyde enjoyed gamesmanship. Every Haverhill-Methuen game was a tete-a-tete.

"He had this way, shall we say, of working the officials," she said. She joked that Mansfield Gym would become "Woelfelized" when the Rangers were in town.

To this day, she runs into former Hillies with long memories. "Oh, my God," one former player told her, "we hated you then."

"It was a great rivalry," Hyde said. "A lot of fun."

There was one thing she claims to have on Woelfel.

"I was best dressed," she said.

...

Woelfel's style | his demeanor  and his wardrobe | was distinctive.

"Brown, old school wind pants," Guertin said,  "a tucked in Haverhill High polo shirt. Every practice. He always wore the same outfit."

It suited him well, she said.

"He's just very quirky," Guertin said. "He has rules. It was a big deal when someone on my team had black sneakers. He was horrified. It took him a long time to get over that."

But hard work, she said, cured all.

"You weren't going to win unless you were working hard," Guertin said. "That meant practices and games, from beginning to end."

"I always looked at him as being really well-prepared, at making sure his kids were prepared," Haverhill High track coach Mike Maguire said. "His attention to detail was second to none."

Woelfel and his older brother Mike, his top assistant for years, were strict, but helpful, according to Haverhill High senior Michelle Stanley.

"They are pretty tough on you most of the time, but they only wanted us to get better," she said. "They worked on a lot of skills. You can just tell they definitely do care about how their players develop."

Michelle's aunt Karen played on Woelfel's first state title team. She said the players could "Go to him for anything." Even if they didn't have practice, he'd open the gym.

"He was wonderful," Karen said.

The wins, which piled up for two decades, were harder to come by in Woelfel's final years. The Hillies went 3-15 this season and 26-50 over the past four seasons.

"It's tougher on (the coaches) than it has been for everyone else," Michelle Stanley said. "Especially Kevin. He has won six state championships. He went from that, to what it is now."

Still, there's never any grumbling. Not from Woelfel.

"You do the best with what you've got," Hyde said. "If the best is 2-18 and everybody worked as hard as they can, that's the best you can do."

The glory days are gone. But the stories left, Guertin said, are never boring.

"The memories are great for me," she said. "I still live in Haverhill. I'll be out walking with my kids, and neighborhood men, old-timers, will say, 'Remember this game? Remember when you did this?'"

Guertin remembers her second-to-last high school game, the 1992 state semifinals. The Hillies, she recalls, were underdogs to Brockton, but came away with a 62-45 win at the Boston Garden.

At the end of the game, Woelfel emptied the bench.

"He took me out and stared at me," Guertin said. "I'm waiting to see what I did wrong and he gave me the nod of approval. Then he picked me up and hugged me. That was a big deal. I actually got a smile out of him."