BOWLING GREEN — Fred Chmiel has learned from the best as an assistant to some of the top women’s college basketball coaches in the country.
The newest mentor at Bowling Green State University is ready to take that knowledge into the next step of his nearly 30-year coaching career.
“I love challenges, I love that coaching seat, I love making big decisions. It’s always been in my blood,” Chmiel said. “I started out as a head coach back when I had a nice set of hair, and I loved it.
“The only reason I’ve been an assistant so long is because I’ve worked with great people. I’ve learned from incredible mentors, and I’m even more prepared now than when I was a little kid at 22 years old.”
Chmiel was introduced as Bowling Green State University’s women’s basketball coach during a news conference Monday morning at the Stroh Center. Current BGSU players and numerous supporters of the program and university were among those in attendance.
“Through my coaching career, there’s always been jobs that come up that I’m like ‘That’s a job I’d love to be at,’” Chmiel said, “and this came up and I knew immediately that I had to reach out and try to get in contact with [BGSU athletic director] Derek [van der Merwe] and make this happen.”
Chmiel’s contract is for five years with a base salary of $260,000. Some of the incentives in the contract include $10,000 if the team wins either the Mid-American Conference regular season or tournament championship, $15,000 for both, $5,000 if the team receives a Women’s National Invitation Tournament bid, and $10,000 for an NCAA tournament bid.
The new coach’s background as an assistant coach speaks volumes. He spent the past eight seasons on head coach Dawn Staley’s staff at South Carolina; the Gamecocks’ two NCAA national titles (2017 and 2022) and remarkable 247-32 overall record were just some of the numerous accolades the program achieved during that span.
Chmiel was also an assistant at Minnesota (2014-15), Penn State (2010-14), San Diego State (2008-10), and Temple (2006-08). His head coaching experience includes the 2006 season with the San Jose Spiders of the National Women’s Basketball League, as well as being the men’s coach at Lassen Community College (1999-2005) and Feather River Community College (1995-99) in California.
Staley told The Blade on Monday that she believes Chmiel will be able to adjust well to being a head coach of a Division I program.
“He’s been in a lot of situations here where it prepared him for this next level,” Staley said. “To take it on full blast, it has its challenges. But I know he’s grounded in who he is as a person and as a hard worker, and know that he’s out to make young people’s lives better and make them better basketball players and better people.
“He’s just a relentless worker. He’s a tireless worker, and it’s not frivolous work; it’s work. There’s meaning behind his work.”
Chmiel has several memories – albeit not the most pleasant – of BGSU from when he started on Staley’s staff at Temple in 2006. The Owls lost to BGSU 86-67 at Anderson Arena early in a 2006-07 campaign in which the Falcons went 31-4 and advanced to the Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament.
“I have vivid memories of a Curt Miller-led team giving us the business in a 19-point blowout. This crowd was deafening, and the love and support was evident,” Chmiel said. “There are some things you don’t forget during your coaching tenure, and that was one of them.”
He’s expecting his new memories to be a lot better, and he wants to achieve them with the group of players that made the 2022-23 season one of the best in BGSU history.
One of the first things Chmiel did during the news conference was acknowledge the numerous current BGSU players in attendance. He said their presence gave him goosebumps and meant a lot to him.
What the Falcons did during the season and their style of play stood out to Chmiel. BGSU (31-7) tied the 2006-07 squad for the most wins in a season in program history, and the Falcons reached the Women’s National Invitation Tournament semifinals for the first time in eight appearances.
“This team is impressive to watch, I have fun watching them,” said Chmiel, who replaced Robyn Fralick after she recently took over as Michigan State’s women’s basketball coach. “I love the way you guys play, I love the way you get up and down the floor. You disrupt defensively, they’re exciting, and we’re going to keep it that way.
“We’re going to get after it. They’re just great young people, too. I had the chance to talk with all of them on the phone, and from freshmen to fifth-year senior, they’re just mature and well-spoken and they know exactly what they want out of this. I was extremely grateful to have a chance to be able to coach them.”
BGSU guard Lexi Fleming, who was among the players in attendance, said it was meaningful to her that Chmiel had positive things to say about the team. Chmiel, along with his wife Julie and daughters Skylar and Ivy, went straight to the team to talk to them immediately after the news conference, as well.
“That means everything just knowing that he believes in us, he sees us, and he’s going to do anything he can to make us not only better basketball players, but better people,” Fleming said.
Around 35 candidates, including current Division I and II head and assistant coaches, were considered for the position, according to van der Merwe. Chmiel continued to stand out during the search.
“Fred’s name just kept rising and rising,” van der Merwe told The Blade. “I’m not a person that’s enamored just because they worked at a larger institution; I’m a person that they have to earn it.
“They have to demonstrate that they’ve got the competency and the capacity, and Fred, every step of the process I was doing background work and research work on him, he stood out. I just knew it was the right decision.”
Chmiel said the biggest thing he can take from the powerful Southeastern Conference to the Mid-American Conference is work ethic.
“Hard work is hard work. I’ve been everywhere, across the United States from mid-major to high-major to high school basketball to junior college basketball to trying to teach [my daughters] how to play... Hard work, it’s just hard work,” he said. “You’ve got great student athletes, I don’t expect it to look that much different [at BGSU].
“We’re just going to work hard, get in the gym and let the chips fall where they may. This is not a rebuild, this is a reload, and we’re going to do great things. I feel it in my bones. I know what good teams look like, and I’ve seen that in them.”
First Published April 10, 2023, 9:38 p.m.
