Fronk eager to make jump to head position

MEDFORD GIRLS BASKETBALL

Medford’s athletic program didn’t have to look far to find its new girls basketball head coach.

An assistant on the team’s bench the past six winters, Chad Fronk was officially elevated to the head position in late May, taking over for Greg Klapatauskas, who stepped down for personal reasons after two seasons in that position.

Fronk is a name and face familiar to many in the Medford school district. A lifelong resident of Medford, Fronk is a 1990 graduate of Medford Area Senior High, where he won multiple letters in basketball and football, and is closing in on 30 years at Weather Shield where he is the projects division manager and an automation engineer.

When the head job opened, Fronk said he went back and forth for a bit on whether to apply, but after conversations with his wife Misty, he come to the conclusion this was something he wanted to pursue. Fronk interviewed for the position two years ago and, though he didn’t get it, he stayed on as the top assistant under Klapatauskas the past two years. He first joined the staff in 2016-17 in Dave Vaara’s lone year as head coach and remained for three years under Jessica Faude.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Fronk said. “We had a good conversation (with the interview committee). I told them I want to be a positive influence on these kids. Winning, and all that other stuff is kind of secondary in my mind. Obviously it’s important. The girls want to win. But I’m like, if I can be a role model for these kids, get them in a team environment, have good relationships. Treat each other with respect. That’s what I want. I want the kids to have fun.”

Fronk is making one key addition to the coaching staff bringing in another 1990 Medford graduate and high school teammate, Keith Wicks. Wicks was Thorp’s head coach the past five seasons.

“I told him to just have some fun with me, keep it positive,” Fronk said. “He’s a good coach. He’s been at Thorp for five years and he’s a lot like me. I think we’re on the same page with a lot of this stuff. We just want to keep that positive vibe going with the kids and make sure we’re having some fun.”

After graduating from Medford, Fronk played one season of junior college basketball with Western Wisconsin Technical College on a team that went to the national championship tournament. His daughter Marissa, a 2021 Medford graduate and two-time All-GNC performer, just finished a year of playing with St. Catherine’s University in Minnesota, but has since decided to hang up her basketball shoes. That was one of the factors that convinced Fronk the timing was right to take the head job.

Medford is coming off an 8-16 season that coaches and players would likely agree wasn’t what they were hoping for coming off a 13-9 season in 2020-21 that included a WIAA Division 2 regional championship. The Raiders finished fourth in the Great Northern Conference with a 6-6 record.

The off-season kicked into high gear last week with the start of Tuesday varsity summer league play and Thursday JV summer league play where Fronk and Wicks got their first look at what they may have come winter.

Fronk has ideas of how he’d like to see Medford play but, as always, much of that will depend on the strengths of the personnel the team has. One of the looming questions is the health of senior-to-be Bryn Fronk, Chad’s daughter and the team’s primarily ball handler who went down with an ACL tear in January. Her absence certainly was a factor in the team’s struggles of last season.

“I want to be competitive and do the best we can,” Chad Fronk said. “With the crew that we have, just at first glance, we’ll see what we can get done. Hopefully Bryn can get back. She’s on track, but she still has a long way to go, she’s only halfway through it. She’s hopefully getting back to playing basketball. She’s told me she wants to play. If we can get her back in December, that would be awesome. Realistically it might be January.

“I want to be competitive, I want to play faster,” he added. “I want to coach the girls to play with more energy and just to play faster. I think with the correct encouragement and coaching, I think we can speed things up a little bit. We’ll see how it goes.”

Fronk said his first call upon being hired was to Medford’s boys head coach Ryan Brown, who’s built a highly-competitive and successful program since taking over in 2015. Fronk is hoping to implement some of Brown’s offense sets and he said just the early advice he’s gotten from Brown has been helpful. He also said he got lots of positive feedback from the GNC coaches he’s gotten to know the past six years.

“(Brown) said, ‘just be the coach you want to be,’” Fronk said. “He asked, ‘how do you want to coach?’ I said, ‘I want to be a hard-nosed man-to-man team on defense, maybe sprinkle in some zone once in a while to change it up. I want to teach these kids to play man-to-man defense.’” Another goal of his is to bring participation numbers back up a bit. The Raiders were in the mid-20s last year while trying to field three teams.

“My goal is to be here awhile,” Fronk said. “I don’t have any aspirations of not doing it. I want to build the program and just be the guy.”