3/20/2012 - Geffken Leaves Lasting Legacy
Fred Geffken faced a pretty tough dilemma.
The then-Sparta policeman and former Marine (there is no such thing as an ex-Marine) had experience in making tough choices due to his profession, but this one was a dandy.
You see, Geffken had applied for the varsity girls basketball head coaching positions at Sparta and Pope John and two Sussex County sports legends wanted him for the job.
The late, great Dick Cassels of Sparta and the Vic Paternostro, the legend at Pope John High School who recently passed away, each wanted Geffken to take over respective girls basketball teams for the 1979-1980 season.
“As you know, those two were great coaches and men and it was an honor to have both of them wanting me to coach,” Geffken told me. “I was just about to call Vic, who I liked very much, that I would take the job, but Dick Cassels called me and I couldn’t turn down the chance to coach at Sparta.
“But I was just a phone call away from taking the job at Pope John, isn’t that something?” Geffken added.
It certainly is and makes you think how the landscape of girls basketball would have been if Geffken had decided to lead the Lions.
Fortunately, for the Spartans he didn’t and the man who would eventually become Chief of the Sparta Police set a standard, that I feel, will never be equaled in Sussex County basketball, boys or girls.
As most of you know Geffken decided to hang up his whistle after this past season (6-17), his worst in 33 seasons, to enjoy the retired life, but not after a lot of soul searching.
But after discussing it with his family he decided to call it quits after a magnificent run that will never be matched. The Hall-of-Famer finished his career with an astounding 693-168 record, with 55 of those losses coming in his final five seasons.
He guided the Spartans to state titles in 1985, 1990 and 2001 as well as 12 section crowns, including an amazing five in a row in the mid-1990s, 19 Sussex County Interscholastic League titles, 14 SCIL Festival crowns with 26 straight appearances in the championship game.
Pretty, impressive, right?
Well, there is more. He has sent 27 players onto the Division I level, including seven from his 1985 squad, and has had 17, 1,000-point scorers.
But I will go all cliché on you now and say numbers can’t describe what Geffken meant to his players and the sport, which he put on the map in Sussex County.
Prior to Geffken, Gretta Sencevicky built Franklin and then Wallkill Valley into county and region powers, but Geffken took the baton and brought the sport to levels no one could have ever imagined in Sussex County.
Remember, Title IX was still very new when Geffken took over in 1980 and after his daughter Barb convinced him to coach, the former youth boys basketball coach and founder of the Sparta PAL changed the way people looked at girls basketball.
The Spartans’ run to the state championship in 1985 energized a town that was all about football. Who were these girls and how did they become such good players?
Well, you thank Geffken for that. He dedicated all of his free time to making the girls program the first-class program it is today. He worked with the youth of the township and helped build a feeder program that was second to none.
I remember people used to half-jokingly ask me if there was something in the water in Sparta that produced so many talented basketball players that were all tall, to boot.
That would be an easy explanation, but the truth was that Geffken helped mold the great players who also put into a tremendous amount of time and effort into becoming elite basketball players.
Plus the whole community bought into Geffken’s program and every year when I was working for the local paper I would talk to Fred for the preview and he would say to me, “Buddy, wait until see this freshman.”
It was like for more years than I can remember.
Geffken, despite the great success, always won with class. There would other coaches and fans who felt he ran up the scores sometimes, but the numbers dispute that.
Geffken would empty his bench in the third quarter on most nights, it was not his fault the other team couldn’t stop the Spartans second and third-teamers. There were numerous times the Spartans could have put a 100-spot on the board, but Geffken refused to let his team do it.
In fact, Geffken crunched Lisa Olsen’s numbers and the minutes she played, and Olsen who went onto a fine career at Manhattan and finished with 1,952 points, would have smashed the 2,000-point milestone if he didn’t sit her.
Geffken is a gentleman’s gentleman and is all class on and off the court. His practice of sending personal notes to 1,000-point scorers from other schools is strictly old-school and a thing of the past.
Geffken is the type of man and coach you would want your children to play for and by the attendance at the Lady Spartan Alumni Game the last two years his former players still love him until this day, traveling wide and far to pay tribute to Geffken.
Geffken, a great family man, treated his players like he would his own. That special family bond is illustrated by all the families that have played for him from his own daughter, to the Reigstad sisters, the Chaplins, Prols, Dilworths, Keils, Jents and Ryngalas, and the list goes on.
And on a personal level, Geffken has been great to me on and off the court and is someone I truly admire as man not just a coach.
So, farewell, buddy, enjoy your time in Florida and let it be known you will truly be missed by the people who know and respect what you have done for the game of basketball.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
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