Veteran Lincoln High School assistant coach Eric Ewald has been chosen for the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He will be inducted in May as a “career coach” and calls it “quite an honor.”
But there is a catch. When you’ve worked blissfully in the background for nearly 30 years, the attention of a Hall of Fame selection is a bit awkward.
The pregame ritual at Lincoln is to go dark in the gym and shine a spotlight on the Railers as they are introduced. Ewald has never sought the spotlight. He is less about making headlines than making headway on Lincoln’s effectiveness and, especially, the confidence of its players.
Head coach Neil Alexander has 824 wins at Lincoln and Ewald has been by his side for 669. Alexander says simply, “We wouldn’t be where we’re at without him. He’s a fantastic individual.”
Part of Ewald’s value can be measured in points and efficiency. While he isn’t comfortable being called an offensive “guru,” stressing that he, Alexander and all of Lincoln’s coaches work together, the four-out, one-in motion offense he brought in 28 years ago has been vital to the Railers’ success.
As impactful has been Ewald’s influence on the collective psyche of the players. His even-keel demeanor blends well with the intensity Alexander brings.
“I’m the one who gets on the kids and screams and hollers and he pumps them up,” Alexander said. “He also has that knack of when to step in and when a kid needs to be encouraged. He does it with such grace and class. It’s a pretty special thing that he can do. Not a lot of people could be like Eric.”
“It’s almost like fire and ice,” said Nathaniel Smith, a 2011 Lincoln grad and an associate athletic director at Illinois State. “Coach Al is more fire and Coach E is more ice. He’s a calming presence. He never wavers in being level headed, which is good. It’s tough love from Coach Al and then it’s all love from Coach E.”
Ewald will tell you he is not always the “good cop,” that Alexander also will put his arm around a player and let him know how much the program needs him.
Still …
“That’s definitely one of my jobs … how do I say it? … to just be able to pull a kid aside and build him up,” Ewald said. “Build him up and tell him the important part that he plays. Sometimes I’ll just give them a little bump and say, ‘Hey, just because you got yelled at doesn’t mean you’re not loved.’”
A longtime English teacher and now an English liaison/intervention specialist at Lincoln, Ewald can tailor his message depending on the players’ strengths, much like a teacher to a student.
When the Railers are facing an opponent that plays zone defense, it goes something like this.
“If we have a really good shooter, I’ll walk by him and whisper, ‘I don’t want you turning down any threes (3-pointers),’” Ewald said. “I want them to always be confident. I don’t want them to have to play looking over their shoulder. I want them to know that I’m behind them.”
Other times, the encouragement focuses on more subtle aspects of the game.
“I’ll pull a kid aside and say, ‘I love the way you drive the ball. I love the way you get into the paint. I love the way you pass the ball,’” Ewald said. “I’ll sometimes say, ‘Nobody is going to notice how well you pass it, but I’m going to.’ Or, ‘a lot of people aren’t going to notice you’re one of the few guys who can guard your area, but I will.’
“My career has been great because I've coached great kids from great families. Every memory has a face on it. You get attached to those kids.”
Finding the offense
A 1987 Lincoln graduate, Ewald never played varsity basketball for the Railers. He played on the freshman and sophomore levels, but among his classmates were Joe Cook, Donnie Aeilts and Jason Jones, cornerstones of a terrific varsity team under Loren Wallace.
Ewald played baseball for four years as a Railer, then played basketball and baseball at Lincoln Christian College. He also played a year of baseball at Greenville College, where he earned his teaching degree.
He was teaching at Chester East Lincoln grade school when he began a two-year stint as an assistant basketball coach at Lincoln Christian. He immersed himself in finding his offensive philosophy, attending camps and studying college programs such as Indiana, Duke and North Carolina.
He fell in love with Dean Smith’s four-out, one-in motion offense at North Carolina and it had begun to click at Lincoln Christian. That’s when Ewald got a call from Alexander.
“Neil was a set-play guy and is mostly a set-play guy,” Ewald said. “But he wanted something to kind of back up their set plays. When I was hired, I coached the freshmen for a couple of years and I ran four-out, one-in motion. He liked it, so we immediately started putting it in at the varsity level.”
It was the 1998-99 season. The varsity was led by 6-foot-10 Brian Cook, a senior who went on to be Big Ten Player of the Year at Illinois and have a lengthy NBA career. A sophomore standout guard was Gregg Alexander, the coach’s son who later surpassed 1,000 points at Illinois State.
“Here I was walking into their practice, really new and really green,” Ewald said. “I’m like, ‘I hope they like this because this is what we’re going with.’ And it’s kind of stuck ever since.”
Neil Alexander, who is in his 49th year as a high school head coach, is 17 wins from 1,000 and 52 shy of Gene Pingatore’s state-record 1,035 victories. He said he gives his assistant coaches, led by Ewald and Gregg Alexander, “a lot of freedom” to coach to their strengths.
The staff also includes former Railer guard Brandon Farmer, Josh McClallen, Gary Rademaker and Zach Damm.
“I kind of take care of the sets and he (Ewald) takes care of the motion,” Neil Alexander said. “I do a lot with the defense, It’s just worked out so well. He’s doing things offensively that I don't even know what he’s doing. I look around and I go, ‘What is that?’ But I think if you have a good staff, you let those guys coach and do their thing and you have a happy staff.”
Cancer battle
Ewald, 56, began experiencing back pain in 2023. By November, it was “excruciating,” he said. Believing he had a herniated disc, he went to a doctor, who ordered an MRI.
As he was leaving the hospital following the MRI, a nurse stopped Ewald and said a doctor wanted to see him.
“I knew right then, I don’t think this is going to go well,” Ewald said. “He put up a picture of my spine on the screen and said, ‘Eric, you don’t have a herniated disc. You have a broken spine. There’s cancer there. We need to find out where it’s coming from because it looks like it’s metastasized. You’re not going anywhere.’”
Ewald had multiple myeloma. He was put on high-dose steroids and given a brace for the back pain. It eased quickly. Then came radiation, chemotherapy and stem cell treatments, during which Ewald went from 176 pounds to 120.
The steroids and brace “allowed the back to grow back together,” he said. “My radiation treatments were able to shrink the tumor around my spine and they were able to kill off the rest of the cancer with chemo.”
Ewald missed the 2023-24 season, watching games from his bed via live stream. He stayed in touch with the coaches through text messages, offering detailed input on what he’d seen.
“Even though he wasn’t with us physically, he was still there,” said Gregg Alexander, who’s in his 19th year on his father’s staff. “He still had a huge impact on that team that year.”
Throughout his treatment, Ewald communicated regularly with the coaches and many friends and former players who contacted him. He often sent out motivational messages.
“Somehow he ended up inspiring me while he was going through all that,” said Matt Schick, a starter on Lincoln’s 2005 and 2007 Elite Eight teams who played at Illinois Wesleyan. “That’s the kind of guy he is. It was almost as therapeutic for me as it was for him.”
One message from Ewald read, “A man is not measured by how well he stands in the sunshine, but how well he stands in the rain.” Following his final treatment, he sent the coaches and others, “Here comes the sun … I’m headed home.”
Another message was from a quote by Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel that states, “To not exist for yourself is a beautiful thing.”
“Coach E has never wanted the accolades or the spotlight or the praise,” Schick said. “He has existed not for himself, but for others throughout all these years.
“He’ll always be known by the players and people who know the program well as a real key, irreplaceable ingredient to the success Lincoln has had during the Coach Al era. He’s kind of the guy behind the guy. I’m glad to see him get his flowers here with the Hall of Fame.”
Bond for a lifetime
Ewald is considered cancer-free. He takes preventative mediation that he will be on the rest of his life and has blood work drawn each month. He said multiple myeloma is a cancer that will return, but advancements in research and medicine have lengthened the span to 15 years.
“That’s good for now,” Ewald said. “When I was sick, there were so many former players and people in the Railer family and basketball community who reached out and very much helped me through that time. Being a part of the Railer family took on a whole new meaning to me. I feel very fortunate and thankful to be a part of it.”
He is particularly close with the coaches, saying, “That was a time where you really come face to face with just how important the relationships you've built and all the people you have surrounded yourself with are. Literally, there were times where I couldn’t walk. Those coaches carried me figuratively. That builds a brotherly bond that will last a lifetime.”
Ewald also leaned heavily on his wife of 33 years, Heather, and their children, Madi, 28, and Will, 23, a former Railer player. They have seen him regain much of his weight, resume his love for bass fishing and return to the court, where he plans to be for as long as Neil Alexander coaches, maybe longer.
Gregg Alexander hopes it is longer, calling Ewald “an unbelievable person.”
“He’s had a huge impact on me and my family and my kids, who have been around him and get to talk to him,” he said. “This (the Hall of Fame) is well-deserved. He has such a creative, awesome basketball mind. He just sees things differently, in a positive way.”
“He’s a better person than he is a coach, which is hard to believe because he’s a pretty darn good coach,” Smith said. “He genuinely cares about people, which goes a long way in the coaching and teaching world. It’s how you make an impact on kids’ lives, right?”
