Fries happy to take job at Monroeville

Bob Fries is taking the reins at his alma mater. The 1997 Monroeville graduate will be the Eagles new boys basketball coach, the school announced last week. Fries was an assistant under Paul Roeder for the past two seasons after previously working at the youth and middle school levels in Monroeville. "It's very cool, very exciting," Fries said. "It's cool to see a lot of people that I've worked with being very encouraging to me going through the interview process. A lot of times you don't know if anyone pays too much attention, and then you see this kind of outreach. It's pretty cool to see." As a kid growing up in Monroeville, Fries was a basketball junkie. That's how it went for a kid following a decade after the Eagles won the 1984 Class A state title. "I was an avid basketball fan, a gym rat, always going to camps," Fries said. "Loved the history of our program and other area programs. I've been going to the state tournament for 30-some years." Fries, a financial advisor who attended Bowling Green State University after high school, didn't get right into coaching. It felt to him at the time like it was more of a position that teachers wound up in, and he wasn't a teacher. But he latched on at the youth level in his hometown about eight years ago and started working his way up. The self-expectation that he could enjoy coaching was quickly proven correct. "I love seeing the progress and watching the kids go through the process of improving and getting better," Fries said. "I've kind of been ramping up to this." Roeder, an Eagles great who led Monroeville for the past six seasons, imparted plenty of lessons onto Fries. "Attention to detail is one thing that I thought Paul was great at," Fries said. "He had very detailed practice plans, and that really stood out. There's a lot that goes with it besides just showing up on Friday or Saturday night and having a game plan. Everybody probably critiques the call at the end of the game, but there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. The bus schedules, making sure kids have the right uniform, everything. It was eye opening to see that." Monroeville found sustained success under Roeder — a 73-68 mark over the six seasons, including 42-42 in Firelands Conference play. They won two sectional championships, improving from 1-22 the year before Roeder arrived to rattle off four consecutive winning seasons from 2019-2023. Fries will get to work with a team that brings back three of its five starters, a group that also will be nice and familiar with him, some dating back to Fries' days with Eagles youth teams. "I'd like to think I have a good relationship with all the kids," he said. "They seem excited about wanting to get in the gym." Fries knew when Roeder stepped down that this was a chance he wanted to pursue. "I wasn't sure how much longer Paul was gonna go," Fries said. "I enjoyed working with Paul. It would've been great to get more experience and knowledge from him for five more years. I definitely wanted to jump on the opportunity to be at my alma mater and in the community." Fries and the Eagles hope to keep up a solid standard in the years to come. Roeder always made sure his groups were ready to go, Fries said, and he wants the next generation of Monroeville basketball to be the same way. "We'll try to do some of the same stuff that we've done in the past, but we'll do a few things a little bit different," Fries said. "One of my biggest things is I really want to push the kids to continually improve, always stressing fundamentals, and we have to get after it when we're on the floor. We've got to bring that work ethic to practice and to the games, and we have to play hard."