Practice makes state titles at HH Prep
By Stephen Prudhomme
Staff Writer
Hilton Head Island - Bob Sulek scored only two points during his basketball career at Wheeling Jesuit College, but he laid the ground work for a coaching career that took him to Harvard and his latest stop, Hilton Head Prep, where winning state championships has become almost an annual rite.
Sulek, 65, is the girls’ basketball coach at Hilton Head Prep. The Lady Dolphins have been one of the more dominant programs in SCISA, capturing seven titles in the past 12 years, including the most recent campaign.
Sulek’s coaching style is patterned after one of his coaching heroes, Bobby Knight, the subject of one of several books he’s written.
“This is not a democracy,” Sulek explains. “It’s a dictatorship. I run the girls hard and coach them like boys. It’s an unusual kind of girl who buys into this old-school style of coaching. Kids really do want to be told no and know that every mistake they make will be corrected.”
A native of Ohio, Sulek played basketball in high school and at the aforementioned Wheeling Jesuit College, where he quickly realized his physical talents wouldn’t take him very far.
“I couldn’t run or jump,” Sulek recalls. “I wasn’t very good. I had to become a smart player and focus on defense, which wins ballgames.”
Recognizing that coaching was the only way he could stay in involved with the game, Sulek headed to California and coached a boys’ high school freshman team. At the same time he pursued his other two loves: teaching and writing.
Over the next two decades Sulek’s love for coaching would take him around the country to various high schools and colleges. In New Jersey, while coaching a high school boys’ team, he recalls how he would take his players to local pickup games against college and pro players and stay on the court for three to four hours. “We focused on the fundamentals, passing and defense,” he says. “We didn’t want to lose because you would have to sit for an hour or longer.”
Later, at Harvard, he served as an assistant coach for the men’s team for one year but was frustrated by the unwillingness of the head coach to push his players in practice.
After nearly 25 years of coaching boys and men, Sulek faced perhaps his greatest challenge: heading up a girl’s team after moving to Hilton Head.
“I had never seen a girls’ game in my life,” says Sulek, noting that the Hilton Head Prep job was the only one available at the time. “During the first year, the parents and fans got on me for running the girls too hard in practice. I ran them just like the men.”
Sulek doesn’t measure his success by how many games or state titles he’s won but rather by his practices.
“It’s not about winning or losing,” Sulek notes. “I don’t even know how many games I’ve won. I don’t care. It’s about honoring the game and practicing hard. For me, the most enjoyable part of coaching is the 100-plus practices.”
Suley stresses to his players the importance of taking the lessons learned in practice and in games and applying them to their daily lives.
“You should do everything the best you can,” Sulek says. “You’ll never have a happy day in your life unless you put your best foot forward.”
