Ready to Rock

Veteran basketball coach takes over Warriors’ boys team

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

ROCKFORD — In his 20-plus years of coaching basketball, Bob Engels has witnessed the perpetual transition of the game.

“It’s just like anything else in life, if you don’t adapt to the changes around you, you’re going to be left behind,” he said.

When Engels first got into coaching, the game underwent a major renovation — or at least it did amid the Iowa girls hoops scene.

“Iowa was one of the last states to have six-on-six in girls basketball,” Engels said of the format which is sometimes referred to as “basquette” where each team fields a trio of defenders and offenders on both sides of the court. Players were forbidden from crossing the timeline.

“When we finally went to five-on-five with players going up and down the court, that’s when I got involved,” said Engels, whose daughter Andrea was on his first Rockford girls basketball team in 1993.

“Every college was playing five-on-five at the time, so we needed to prepare our girls to that style of play if they wanted to play in college,” Engels said. “But it did eliminate a lot of girls. Before, there were defensive specialists and offensive specialists. Now you had to run the floor and play both, and a lot of girls had a hard time keeping up with the changes.”

Engels continued to coach girls basketball at Rockford through 2009.

“While I was growing up, basketball was the hardest sport for me,” said Engels, who was more of a natural in football and baseball. “But because it was so hard, I grew to appreciate it and it soon turned out to be my favorite sport.”

After taking several years off from coaching, Engels was back in the game as an assistant coach for Rockford boys’ team serving under head coach Ben Klapperich. Klapperich has since moved on to become Charles City’s boys’ varsity coach, and on June 20 Engels was approved to take over Rockford’s program.

“We’re going to continue to do a lot of of the things we did when ‘Klapp’ was here,” Engels said. “There will be some changes, but not much.”

A farmer by trade, Engels is a grain merchandiser for FTF, Inc., a company owned by his son, Dan Engels.

“I don’t work at the school, so I don’t have contact with the kids during school hours like many coaches,” Engels said. “But we have open gym this summer, and we’ve been doing a lot of things to get ready.”

Many of his players have baseball commitments to attend to, but that’s alright with Engels.

“That’s the way it is at a small schools — you need your athletes to fill teams every season,” Engels said. “But it’s best to play more than one sport.

“Many professional basketball players were multisport athletes in high school.”