Routheaux takes over Ironwood girls basketball team

The Routheaux family will continue its tradition of producing head basketball coaches.

Deke Routheaux was the head coach at Gogebic Community College for many years and his son, Tim, was hired Monday night by the Ironwood Board of Education as the new varsity girls’ basketball coach after Noel Aho stepped aside after four years.

Routheaux has been the middle school girls’ basketball coach for two years and he feels very good about the players coming into the junior varsity and varsity programs.

“I’m excited to be coaching these girls,” Routheaux said. “I’ve seen the girls develop for two years and I think there’s a lot of potential in the program. We just want to get better every day and keep moving forward. What I will ask of the girls is to play hard and have fun. I’m also big on discipline and attitude.

“I want to establish the program in the K-12 grades. I will try to work with the elementary grades with help from the parents. This is my home town and I want to succeed here.”

Those who know him well think Routheaux has the right stuff to succeed as a head coach. Both Ironwood athletic director Gordy Erickson and Red Devil boys coach Pete Lewinski had very similar things to say about Routheaux.

“Tim has a high basketball I.Q.,” Erickson said. “He was born and raised in a basketball family and he’s not afraid to put in the time in the off-season. The thing I like most are his practice plans. He has a lot of good drills and he puts them to good use. And it will help him that he will still coach the middle school girls in the fall and the varsity in the winter.”

Lewinski agreed with Erickson’s assessment.

“He (Routheaux) will do a good job,” Lewinski said. “He’ll be successful, because he knows the game and comes from a basketball family. And his prior coaching background will help him. He’s had experience coaching at the college level.”

Lewinski coached Routheaux on the varsity level and the new coach said he is looking forward to coaching with Lewinski.

“It will be different since I played for him, but now I’ll be working with him,” Routheau said. “He’s a good guy and he can make you laugh. And he has so many years of experience, so I’ll learn things from him.”

For still being fairly young (30), Routheaux has coached a lot of basketball. In high school, he coached an AAU team that included his sister, Janey, and Kristen Ruppe. They won the consolation championship in Las Vegas.

He was also the men’s basketball coach at La Crosse Western Technical College and completely turned around a program that went 1-26 the year before he arrived. In three years, Routheaux’s teams won 50 games and made a trip to the state finals.

In Ironwood, Routheaux has coached the middle school girls’ team for two years and the middle school boys team for one year. He has also helped out coaching baseball at the high school level and has been a basketball referee for years.

Rouheaux said he applied for the Ironwood girls’ job, because basketball has always been “a big part of his life.”

“I grew up with the game of basketball,” Routheaux said. “It was never forced on me. It was always fun. In coaching, I love to watch kids develop and grow. My dad was the biggest influence on me in learning the game, but I played, coached, helped out teams and been a referee at multiple levels. And I’ve done a lot of observing.”

Routheaux said that given his druthers, he would like to have his teams play tough defense and play an up-tempo style of offense, because it is more fun for the players and the fans enjoy it. But he is a smart enough coach to know that he must suit his offense and defense to the personnel he has on hand.

Erickson said one of Routheaux’s biggest challenges in year one will be a tougher schedule. With local schools Hurley, Bessemer, Wakefield-Marenisco and Mercer expected to field good teams, Northwestern and Hancock (twice) were added to the schedule.

But Routheaux seems to like it that way.

“I want to play bigger schools in non-conference and tough teams from the West-PAC,” Routheaux said. “The non-conference schedule is brutal, but it gets you ready for the playoffs.”