Eugene Seals Jr. has indicated in a Facebook post that he has been selected to coach the Saginaw United High School varsity girls basketball team for the 2023-24 season, forming a year before the official opening slated for 2024-25.
Meanwhile, Saginaw High and Arthur Hill apparently will maintain their own separate boys squads for a final winter season, marking the only city district sport to not merge ahead of time.
Seals, SHS Class of 2000, was a 6-foot-6 Class A all-stater, who went on to play four years of college ball at Miami of Ohio under the former Trojans’ coaching legend, Charlie Coles.
Upon returning home, he served stints at Bridgeport High and Heritage High, while also operating Pride Academy 21 youth basketball camps.
As an inductee in the Saginaw County Sports Hall of Fame, based in the downtown Castle Museum, he earned a reputation for battling against taller foes in the frontcourt.
“I’m still intense out there,” Seals said in a recent interview. “Let’s say, ‘intense teaching,’ also in the teaching mode at all times.”
He added, “When I started in coaching, I was almost too intense. I learned that I can’t expect the kids to do what I did.”
Seals doesn’t hesitate to take a similar strong approach with young males, but he is a softer touch with the girls, if only slightly.
“Most every boy thinks he’s a sure shot to go on to the NBA, but with the girls, it’s generally the opposite,” he explains. “They need to have the confidence to believe in themselves, and to know that I believe in them.”
In addition to playing for Coles in college, Seals learned under another icon, Marshall Thomas, at Saginaw High. He equally salutes his first AAU youth coach, Reggie Robinson.
“Looking back,” he says, “I think of Reggie as giving all of us the proper instruction, in relation to our individual talents and skills. That’s what I strive to do in my own coaching and training.”
For his part, Robinson recalls his protégé as an inexperienced, gangly 9-year-old who was playing for his first team in 1991.
“He was rough around the edges, to say the least,” Reggie notes. “And so I asked him to come to practice a half-hour early, so that we could work one-to-one together. Instead, he would show up an hour ahead, and so I had to move up my schedule so that he wouldn’t beat me there. He constantly improved, on a daily basis, and now the rest is history.”
