Homestead coaches Egelhoff and Keel are joined at the hip by success

Homestead girls tennis coach Jackie Egelhoff and her Highlanders football counterpart Dave Keel are a lot alike.

Both obviously like their jobs a great deal. Egelhoff has been at it for 31 years with both the boys and the girls while Keel is a relatively young buck in his 22nd season at the helm.

They each have three WIAA state team titles and would like to earn a fourth (it's looking very good for Egelhoff in that regard this fall). They have both been honored by their peers with Keel heading into the Wisconsin Football Coaches' Association Hall of Fame and Egelhoff just getting named national high school coach of the year by the United States Professional Tennis Association.

Also, the pair has active and prominent winning streaks behind them. Keel, who just won his 200th career game on Friday (see separate story), has a 66-game North Shore Conference run that seems to get challenged every week now and faces a serious threat again Thursday when his team hosts Whitefish Bay.

Meanwhile, Egelhoff's Highlanders are looking for their fourth straight WIAA state team title. They just cruised to their fourth North Shore championship last week (see separate story).

They both have fine traits like hating to talk about themselves, loving their kids to death and looking outward in their thinking (Egelhoff has been working with and has been an advocate for wheelchair-bound players for years and now that he's retired from teaching, Keel has been quietly aiding programs outside of his conference that he has personal ties to).

"Oh, you know, we don't talk about things like that," Keel said of the NSC streak after the Highlanders narrowly survived Milwaukee Lutheran last week.

"I walked into (Homestead Athletic Director) Ryan's (Mangan) office the other day and he laughed and said 'Do we need a ticker-tape parade?' " chuckled Egelhoff about the national award, "but wow, seriously, this is big."

They also both hate losing worse than root canal surgeries combined with false start penalties (Keel) and double faults (Egelhoff). See Keel's highly engaged activities during and after the Lutheran game last week (see game story) as just one example of that trait.

Respected by peers

So, yes, these two are respected, feared and probably even envied for their work by their peers.

"When Mardee Merar was out (injured), you got the feeling that there was a small window of opportunity for teams like us," Nicolet tennis coach Tim Koppa said, "but when they (the Highlanders) got her back (at the third singles position), the window closed. There is just no easy way to win a flight or two off of them now."

But that doesn't mean they don't take their fair share of good-natured abuse.

Take this deeply tongue-in-cheek, back-handed compliment toward Keel from Shorewood/Messmer coach Drake Zortman, who worked for years on the Homestead staff under the veteran coach.

"Yes," said Zortman with a big smile on his face. "He (Keel) is certainly old enough to have achieved all that."

Zortman's work at lifting the Greyhounds out of football's basement apartment is one of those things that Keel is taking great pride in.

Kids are main focus

But it all comes back to the kids and it always has for those two. Keel is very happy in this uneven but still successful season with the great leadership shown by his veteran quarterback Cody Berger and his workmanlike fullback Antoine Easterling.

They're not the superstars Keel has had at those positions before like Casey Barnes (26-2 record as quarterback in the state runner-up campaign of 2007 and the state title year of 2008) or Demetrius Johnson (NOW Player of the Year at running back and leader of the 1999 state champions), but they're character kids who will be long-remembered by him.

Meanwhile, Egelhoff is in the midst of a season-long farewell tour for the two players who were ground-zero for this current run of success. They are 2008 and 2009 state singles champ Aly Coran and potential state doubles champion Carly Peck.

Egelhoff is astounded at how fast the time has gone by. It just seemed like it was yesterday she was looking at a pair of skinny little super-talented freshmen. Now, she's looking at a pair of mature seniors who want to put their stamp on history by finishing things off well at state.

"Where did the time go?" asked Egelhoff rhetorically. "Even this season has gone by so fast because we've gotten everything in (due to cooperative weather)."

"It's just hard to believe that they're seniors."

With all due nods to wistfulness and sincerity, that must be something that both Keel and Egelhoff say with regularity every year and probably will be saying for seasons yet to come.