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POSTED: TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 2015 10:32 PM |UPDATED: 10:35 PM, TUE MAR 24, 2015.
RAVENNA — After 448 wins, four state titles and 25 years at the helm, Ravenna boys basketball coach Paul Beranek is finally hanging up his clipboard.
The Bluejays’ general announced on Tuesday that he’ll be retiring after 31 years of coaching.
“It’s a hard a decision to make because — I’m not about an identity — but you lose your identity a coach,” Beranek said. “I had to sit down with my family and talk about it with them first and they were all very supportive. Connor (Beranek) even called me and told me it’d be fun to have me watch his games his senior year.”
Getting to watch his youngest son, Connor, lead the University of Nebraska at Kearney basketball team was one of several reasons Beranek decided to retire. He’ll still teach art at Ravenna High School and become a spectator.
That’s a role he didn’t get to take when coaching sons Connor, Drake and Riley. Five state championships in an eight-year stretch — with his sons leading the Bluejays atop the podium in Lincoln — highlighted Beranek’s historic career at Ravenna.
“I look at my cell phone background and I got to hang three state championship medals around my own sons,” Beranek said. “That’s kind of a selfish statement because all of my players were my sons.”
In the beginning of that golden era, Beranek’s future at Ravenna was in doubt. More importantly, his life was in doubt.
After he was diagnosed with bladder cancer, Beranek was told he had six months to live. He didn’t think he was going to see Connor graduate or be around long enough to become a grandfather.
Seven-plus years later, Beranek is alive and well. Cancer didn’t end his coaching career, either.
“Iron sharpens iron,” Beranek said. “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Known for his passion, Beranek’s fiery demeanor only increased after he battled through cancer.
“I wasn’t going allow kids to be walking through the motions and being happy status quo. We wanted to perform at a tough level,” he said. “That’s one of the things we brought to Ravenna as a coaching staff and as players. I’m hard on them for the one simple fact that when you’re playing in front of 4,500 fans, that doesn’t bother you because Coach Beranek has been in your ear all week.”
The night Ravenna played in front of 4,500 fans was different than any of the five state championship games Beranek led the Bluejays to. A rare Class C2 vs. Class A showdown brought in a capacity crowd to Bellevue West. The eventual-Class A runner-ups came away with the 67-63 victory that night, but Beranek’s squad got an experience they wouldn’t soon forget.
“You get to go toe-to-toe with one of the premier Class A schools in the state just with Ravenna-born kids — farmers’ kids, janitors’ kids, teachers kids, cheese plant kids — and we won with kids that were blue collar that would do anything for the program,” Beranek said. “That part is what you miss also.”
Beranek elected not to walk away after Connor’s 2012 class won the C2 title. Instead, he coached until the 2015 class of Michael Bauer, Chance Bock, Blake Chramosta, Kobe Schirmer and Brady Standage played their final game.
Replacing Beranek and the five senior starters, the Bluejay basketball program will experience a facelift in 2015-16. Beranek said he wanted to make sure the program was in the right position when he left it. With assistants Randy Basnett, Wayne Bock, Brian Duncan and Tony Schirmer still in the fold, he feels confident it will be.
“It’s going to be in good hands,” Beranek said. “There are Ravenna players that know what it takes to be successful. The basketball program is going to be in good hands because of the people that are going to be involved with it.
“As a chicken, I wanted to step aside and not make that decision. I’ve got too many former players that invested a lot of love into and I don’t know if I could decide who will be the head coach here. That’s what administrators get paid big bucks for. They can do my dirty work, I guess.”
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