Good to see them return the favor

One of the best parts of this job is seeing kids you covered stay involved and get into coaching (and then them seeing a much fatter and grayer version of me). Had the opportunities recently to see or catch up with a lot of familiar faces from the past...

Adam Smith (Schaumburg) and Glenn Olson (Rolling Meadows) were tough, competitive basketball and baseball players in my early days here 15-16 years ago. Smith, who played baseball and was an assistant coach at Carthage, is now at Concordia University in River Forest as the head baseball assistant. Olson's dad Don, who coached baseball for years at Maine East, actually tried to convince his son to go into journalism. Wisely, he passed on that path and went into coaching. Now in his second year in charge at Maine East, Glenn Olson is having another strong season with a team at 13-4 after getting to the sectional semifinals a year ago.

Got the chance to see Marty Manning's Huntley team play up at Grayslake North on Wednesday. Marty was really fun to watch as the point guard when Hoffman Estates went downstate in 1996 - although he still wishes Bill Wandro gave him more chances to shoot 3s! Marty's doing an excellent job at Huntley and is getting helped by former Hoffman star Bryan Mead (on the 2004 Elite Eight team), who is coaching the sophomores.

And Kevin Mueller, another former baseball and basketball player at Hoffman whose dad Tom is a baseball assistant at Schaumburg and also coached basketball there, is in his first year working with the freshman boys basketball team at Rolling Meadows. He'll also be helping Jim Lindeman in baseball in the spring.