Last week, Mike Finger stepped down as the head coach of the AGWSR girls basketball team. He led the team for three seasons, which followed a stint as an assistant coach under previous head coach Laurie Gann.
Finger says he’ll cherish the memories of the time spent on the staff.
“Through the close of the season and making the decision to step down, obviously something like that is rarely easy,” Finger says. “In this case, it certainly wasn’t for me. I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment and satisfaction out of these last three years. And then before that, a couple of years with Laurie as well. So I’ve really enjoyed my time as a basketball coach in both capacities. So that was a difficult decision, but you know, one that in the end, I felt like was the right one for me to make.”
Finger’s first season as the head coach was 2021-2022, which was his daughter Grace’s senior season.
“You invest a lot of time, obviously, as coaches, into whatever sport it is that you’re coaching. And so if you can kind of double that up in that you’re spending that time with one of your kids, it more than doubles the payback in terms of, your return on time invested. Getting to spend that quality time with one of your children just makes it even that much more worthwhile to do it. So I was really fortunate to be able to do that with Grace. I actually had one year with my middle daughter, Andie, as well. So those are things I’ll always cherish as well as far as great memories. I’m not sure the girls will count them as favorable as I did, but yeah, that was another thing that was just very rewarding.”
Finger hopes to leave a legacy of being a defensive-minded coach and always having his team as prepared as possible.
“I really loved watching our team execute a defensive game plan. The girls were great at buying into the things that we wanted to do. We would have a defensive game plan designed to try to take away their strengths and also to capitalize on their weaknesses. And the girls just really bought into it. They were teachable and coachable. And they would go out there and work really, really hard to execute it. And so it was just fun to watch them do that because on most nights, we had pretty good success at, or at least I felt, at accomplishing what we were trying to do defensively. And that kept us in a lot of ballgames over the last three years.”
The Cougars went 13-10 in 2023-2024.
Interview with Finger:
