For the longest time, the Garfield G-Men girls’ basketball program had sought coaching stability and since Aaron Gilbert became head coach in 2007, he has achieved that after 19 years as the G-Men girls’ coach, he has eclipsed 300 victories in his coaching career.
“I don’t think anybody looks at those career numbers and thinks ‘I am going to get to this or get to that’,” Gilbert told The Weekly Villager. “You have to stay in the game for a long time and you have to have a lot of players along the way. I have been fortunate to have some good players over my career and I have been able to stay in it long enough.”
Officially, Gilbert has tallied a 263-186 record in 19 seasons with the G-Men but has exceeded the 300th victory milestone because of the three years he coached at New Riegel High School, where he went 41-23 before coming to Garfield.
He currently sits as the third-winningest girls’ basketball coach in Portage County history, behind Waterloo great Darrell Garrettson, who is second and all-time winningest Coach George Tompkins of Mogadore.
“You look at some of the names on the list, it is pretty impressive to see some of the people whose names are on that list — people that you looked up to. It is definitely something that you don’t think about,” he noted. “There are a couple of coaches who were high up on that list and you got excited that you were able to beat them because of their status and where they are. I am now the person that people get excited to beat.”
Gilbert arrived in Garrettsville in 2007, after spending a year coaching high school football at South Mecklenburgh High School in Charlotte, NC.
According to the winningest Garfield girls’ basketball coach in school history, he wanted to return home and missed coaching basketball, starting his basketball coaching career at New Riegel, where he was hired as the junior varsity coach and spent five years in that role before being elevated to head boys’ basketball coach.
He credited former Hiram men’s basketball Coach Steve Fleming for giving him a lead on the Garfield girls’ basketball coaching job, and he was hired as both the girls’ basketball coach and at the seventh-grade social studies teacher.
Although Gilbert’s family had frequently moved around Ohio during his childhood, Garrettsville was an unknown to him, but he quickly settled in, finding his niche as both a teacher and girls’ basketball coach.
“I just knew Hiram and Kent State were close and that is really about it,” he added. “It is proof that when you are looking at those jobs, you have to take a chance and sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. This time things worked out.”
Before Gilbert arrived, he said that the longest tenured coach for the girls’ basketball program at Garrettsville had spent only eight years at the helm. Ever since then, the program was constantly cycling through head coaches.
Once Gilbert was named the head coach, he provided much-needed stability to the program.
He credited his success to building relationships with student-athletes when they were still in junior high. He established relationships with the players before he even coached them, which brought a certain level of comfort when they eventually joined the varsity level.
“Any part of it is that you find yourself in a situation that you enjoy being in and you like the people that you are working with and you like kids that you are working with. You look at your younger programs and see that there is some talent along the way,” Gilbert said.
He attributed his desire for coaching to his father, who coached high school football across three different programs, Ashland Crestview, Mansfield Senior and Columbian High School, for over 20 years.
“It is the only thing I knew,” he acknowledged. “I did not grow up in a family that had businessmen or retail sales or any of that type of stuff. I grew up in a family where both parents worked in schools, and I have always been around schools.”
Gilbert’s coaching career started when he was still in high school, coaching in the Catholic Youth League, and freshman basketball at North Baltimore High School when he attended Bowling Green State University and two years as a graduate assistant coach at Heidelberg College for the football program.
As Gilbert enters his 20th season as the G-Men girls’ head coach, everything feels like second nature.
“Obviously you don’t stay in a place for almost 20 years without it being a good fit for you and it is a great community,” he said. “It has a good school system and has great kids.”
