IBCA Hall of Fame a just reward for Elgin's Turek

Sports writers loved Lee Turek.

Officials may not have liked him all the time. And the girls who played basketball for him at Elgin High may not have liked him all the time. But sports writers loved him.

One thing Turek always had going for him, win or lose, was his candor. Most times, that candor was more on display after a loss than a win. Many of the things Turek had to say after a basketball game never saw print, and never will.

Another thing Turek always had going for him, and still does, was his passion for the game of basketball, for the athletes he coached and for Elgin High School.

And on Saturday, May 2 Turek will receive a just reward for his career when he is inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

"It's not something I ever went after, said Turek this week from his winter home in Bradenton, Fla. "It just happened. It's a nice honor."

Turek was 359-236 in his 21 years as Elgin's girls basketball coach, the pinnacle coming in 1996 when he guided the Maroons to a second-place finish in the Class AA state tournament. His teams won seven Upstate Eight Conference championships, six regional titles and three sectionals and at one time had a 63-game winning streak at Chesbrough Field House, the building named after Bill Chesbrough, Turek's high school coach at Elgin.

A 1969 Elgin graduate, he is also a 1973 Illinois alum and Illini basketball is a passion he still holds dear. He taught physical education in Elgin Area School District U-46 for over 30 years.

But what people saw from Turek on the basketball court is far overshadowed by the man he was and is off the court, a man who cared deeply for his players whether they were playing basketball or not.

"He was one of the toughest coaches I played for," said 1996 Elgin graduate Leslie Schock, who went on to play at Northwestern before becoming the head girls coach at Palatine for several years. "In the short time I was a head coach I realized how hard it is to hold people to expectations but he did. He held people accountable. But it wasn't possible for him to push us the way he did if we didn't know how much he cared. We had a fierce loyalty to him and he had our backs in any situation. There was a lot of mutual care and respect. He always wanted us to be the best we could be."

Shock, who is now the freshman girls basketball coach at Rolling Meadows, remembers how giving Turek was as well.

"My senior year I was his intern," she said. "I used to sneak into his lunch box all the time and eat his food. Then he'd start bringing extra food because he knew I'd be going in his lunchbox."

While that may be a fairly mild case of giving back, Mark Sharf remembers how deep Turek's concern for his student-athletes was, and it goes back to the beginning of Turek's career when he coached boys basketball at Elgin's Larsen Middle School.

"When he coached at Larsen and had underprivileged kids, he'd take a kid to an Illinois football game and treat him," said Sharf, Turek's lifelong friend who was an assistant coach on the 1996 state team. "He did stuff people never knew about to help kids. He wanted to help kids with their lives. He did all he could for them and he cared about them. He used moments like that, and all the team get-togethers as teaching moments."

As a coach, Turek was always focused on getting the most he could out of his team.

"The biggest thing is that as tough as he was he cared for us and he always wanted to get the most out of us," said Melissa Parker, also a 1996 Elgin graduate who went on to play at Illinois. "He really pushed us to become the best we could as a team. He challenged us to be a competitive as we could and at the same time he made it fun. This is a well-deserved honor for him."

Turek, whose mother Maxine was the matriarch of girls high school sports in Elgin, also had great respect from those he coached against.

"I always enjoyed competing against him," said Streamwood coach George Rosner. "No matter how good or not good our teams were our games were always competitive and we ended each other's seasons quite often." I miss the camaraderie we had. We'd take trips to DeKalb together and we'd go out together at state tournaments and speaking as an old coach, that's missing today."

Turek, whose daughters Karisa and Jenna played for him, coached the Elgin girls program through adversity as well. The late 1990s into the early 2000s was a time when a Title IX lawsuit spurred widespread changes at Elgin High and throughout U-46 to provide equality for girls sports.

"We had to play with a chip on our shoulder a lot because girls basketball wasn't treated with the same equality as it is today," he said. "I'd like to think we had something to do with that through the middle 90s and beyond.

"It took a lot of people to build what we had - great kids, great assistant coaches, great parents and my wife (Jo) ... I can't even imagine all the time she put in behind the scenes for the program.

"On the basketball court we had a nice run for several years. It was fun. When I started coaching I had to build the program and I'm proud to say I was able to do that. When people played Elgin High they knew they'd have to play a tough game to beat us. When the girls made the commitment to play the game of basketball, and they knew they had to do that to play for Elgin High, well, we wouldn't have had the success we did without that commitment."

One thing Turek, an avid golfer, has never done is regret his decision to leave the coaching profession.

"I haven't really ever looked back," he said. "What I know about girls basketball today is what I read in the Daily Herald. But it's been very rewarding to see so many of the kids I coached become successful adults. I might still look at them as 16, 17 or 18-year olds but so many of them have become so successful in their lives now and that's very nice to see."

Just as it's very nice to see Lee Turek honored in a way he so richly deserves - as a Hall of Famer.

jradtke@dailyherald.com