Prep Basketball | Resler supporters rally

Supporters of Bill Resler, the ousted Roosevelt High School girls basketball coach, are mobilizing to seek his reinstatement.

"We feel like we've been blindsided," said Jill Seidel, a 1973 Roosevelt alumnus whose niece, Hillary, played for Resler and recently graduated from Cornell. "There is a huge conglomerate of people in support of Bill."

Seidel hinted at the possibility of legal action, if necessary, to get Resler reinstated.

She said supporters want to be told why he was fired. Resler said he hasn't been told why.

Resler, who won five KingCo Conference titles and the 2004 Class 4A state championship, was fired Friday. He said he was told by first-year principal Brian Vance that the program was going in a "new direction."

Turnouts began Monday, apparently under Michael Kelly, new assistant vice-principal who previously was athletic director at Chief Sealth. Kelly declined to talk to reporters as practice began and asked them to leave. He said a new coach had not been hired.

In support of Resler, three assistant coaches are refusing to attend tryouts.

Resler, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington School of Business, was grading midterms Monday. He was a focal point in the documentary "Heart of the Game" about Roosevelt basketball and co-wrote the book "Heart of the Team." He is the best-known girls basketball coach in the state and appears in a Nike commercial.

"The thing that has me most angry is that if they were going to fire me, they should have done it in March or two months ago," Resler said. He said firing him on the eve of the season is unfair to the players.

In a new development, Resler said Roosevelt administrators told some of his players' parents last week that he had conducted out-of-season practices, which would have been against state rules. He said what he was conducting were conditioning sessions that didn't involve any basketballs. He said he asked coaches at a KingCo meeting if what he had done was wrong and was told no.

Resler said years ago a player asked him in October to help cure a shooting slump and he refused because the season hadn't started.

"I said, 'I can't talk to you about that. That would be coaching out of season. And she said, 'But who is going to know?' And I said, 'You and I would know. And if you have to cheat or lie to win, you can't win.' "

The abruptness of the firing has prompted speculation that Resler may have done something recently to trigger it.

"I absolutely did not do anything," he said.

Resler has had devoted admirers and critics at Roosevelt, where his record is 187-51.

Known complaints against him include that he doesn't penalize players for profanity, sometimes swears himself and encourages rough play with collision drills and themes such as "pack of wolves."

Resler said he was "flabbergasted" and "bitterly hurt" by his firing. He said he felt better when he got home Friday night and found that the team had toilet-papered his home and put up a sign on his door with a three-word message: "We love you."

Information in this article, originally published Nov. 13, 2007, was corrected Nov. 14, 2007. A previous version of this story contained an error. Bill Resler, former Roosevelt High School girls basketball coach, is a senior lecturer at the University of Washington School of Business. The original version of this article referred to him as a UW tax professor.