Collegiate’s Fiegel putting together a championship career

Collegiate’s boys basketball team practiced for the 72nd time this season Thursday, which means it’s been another really good season.

“It’s our goal in this program,” Collegiate coach Mitch Fiegel said. “When you practice 70 times, you know you’re in the state tournament. There’s no other way to get to 70.”

The Spartans, who beat Frontenac in the quarterfinals of the Class 4A-II tournament Wednesday night in Emporia, have become one of the state’s best and most consistent programs.

Fiegel has led Collegiate to six state championships in his 28 seasons. If the Spartans win their seventh, Fiegel moves into sole possession of third place among Kansas high school coaches. Only Kansas City Wyandotte’s Walt Shublom (10) and Newton’s Frank Lindley (8) have won more. McPherson coach Kurt Kinnamon, whose Bullpups are into the semifinals in 4A-I, also has six.

Fiegel, who grew up in Pratt, will send his team against Pratt in Friday’s semifinals. Collegiate knocked Pratt out of the tournament last year.

“I don’t like them having to play Pratt and I don’t think Mitch does, either,” Marion Fiegel, Mitch’s dad, said.

Marion, raised in Nashville, not far from Pratt, ran a barber shop in Pratt for 48 years. And while he’s still a Greenbacks fan, they don’t compare to his affinity for his son’s team.

“I don’t miss many Collegiate games,” Marion Fiegel said. “I love the style they play, the up-tempo game and all of that.”

Fiegel’s brother, Chuck, coached basketball for years at Protection in southwest Kansas and advised Mitch to get with him when he was trying to decide on a career path.

“Mitch went and spent a weekend with Chuck and Chuck told him, ‘If you want to be a coach, be a good one. You can out-coach the poor coaches but the good ones, you’ve got to outwork them,’ ” Marion said.

And Mitch took that to heart.

Since his first job as a coach at Quivira Heights 29 years ago, Fiegel has demanded hard work from not only himself, but his players.

“We talk about the process,” Fiegel said. “You have to embrace the process and it starts with team camp, summer league, open gyms, individual workouts, AAU basketball, MAYB basketball. You have to get in the gym on your own. We believe the process revolves around one word and that’s ‘work.’ We don’t shy away from it and we get our kids and parents and everybody around us to buy into that.”

Fiegel is 493-192 in 29 years and 478-184 at Collegiate, which has won state championships in 1993, 1996, 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2016.

He was hired at Collegiate after one season at Quivira Heights and the early couple of years were a struggle. He remembered his playing days at Pratt, when the Greenbacks were ranked No. 1 during part of his junior and senior seasons but failed to make it to the state tournament either year.

“I think that led to some of the things I do now,” Fiegel said. “You take the good experiences and the bad experiences and try to mold them both.”

Even in those early difficult times, Fiegel knew help was on the way. He saw it in person his first day as coach.

“I called my dad that night,” Fiegel said. “I had playground duty that day and I told him I didn’t know how good we were going to be that first year, but that I just had seen a seventh-grader on the ground dunking on some low goals. That was DeAngelo Evans.”

Evans’ cousin, Maurice, also was in the Collegiate pipeline. And those two, with others, helped Fiegel find his mojo.

“Those two guys really put us on the map,” Fiegel said.

And they helped a young coach find confidence.

“I just wish I could go back and coach those two guys with the knowledge I have now,” Fiegel said. “There’s no way you can be a complete coach at the age I was when I had them. I don’t know if you can ever be a complete coach, but I’m certainly more complete at 55 than I was at 30.”

Fiegel said he’s never had aspirations to coach at the college level.

“That was never part of my plan,” he said. “I didn’t want to be gone that much, although my wife (Allison) would probably tell you I’m never home. But I got into this to build a program. And when you’re doing that, I don’t think the job is ever finished. There are new kids, new parents and new people. You have to figure out how to get them to buy into what you’re doing.”

Fiegel became emotional a couple of times during our conversation. Once when it was mentioned that a seventh state title could vault him into third place. The other was when he talked about his late mother, Jean, who died of ovarian cancer two years ago.

“She was the most incredible woman,” Fiegel said. “She didn’t come with dad to all our games, but when she came I knew it was a big deal. So we would always make fun when she did and I called her our ‘Big game girl.’ ”

Fiegel said coaching has humbled him. He thinks of all the coaches who never win a state tournament, or even get to one.

“I’ve never taken any of this for granted and I never will,” he said. “I just now how fragile all of this is and feel very blessed to be in the position I am today.”

He loves his team this season, much like he’s loved his teams every season. That’s just how coaching works. The wins and titles add something, for sure, but for Fiegel it’s about the relationships and the personalities. And about getting to coach his sons, Cole and Ty, who were key players on championship teams in 2007, 2009 and 2010.

“But I’ll tell you what sets this little special team apart this year and that’s that nobody expected them to be doing what they’re doing,” Fiegel said. “We graduated eight seniors last year and dropped our first four games in summer league, which we’ve never done.”

But Collegiate finished the summer with back-to-back wins over East and Heights, and Fiegel was seeing a special trait.

“They don’t get rattled,” he said. “They don’t have an agenda among the entire group. They are so selfless, so incredible. They’ve embraced ‘team’ as well as any group I’ve had. And the older you get, the more you realize just how rare that is.”

This story was originally published March 9, 2017 at 6:00 PM with the headline "Collegiate’s Fiegel putting together a championship career."