Where are the now: Brian Placek

Princeton’s game with United Township of East Moline last week brought back a lot of memories from 25 years ago.

It was the first appearance for UT at Prouty Gym since the 1996 Class AA regional championship in which the Panthers knocked off the Tigers 50-47. It was the first loss of the season at home for the Tigers, who finished 21-5.

It also made for a good time for a Where Are They Now story.

It’s no surprise to see that the point guard from that Tigers NCIC championship team, Brian Placek, is deeply involved into coaching.

He is the head JV coach and assistant varsity coach at Harriton High School in Lower Merion Township, Pa for girls basketball, his third year coaching high school. Harriton is the crosstown rival of Lower Merion High School, Kobe Bryant’s alma mater, which has a trophy display of the late NBA legend.

Placek has been coaching youth for 15 plus years and is also the assistant director and coach for Philly Roots AAU girls basketball.

Placek comes by it naturally growing up in a household of coaches. He played for his dad, Bruce, at PHS, who coached for many years. His mom, Rita, coached PHS volleyball for 25 years, winning a state championship in 1990.

“I believe it was always in me to coach, but I didn’t know for sure until I had stepped away from the game for nearly 10 years,” he said. “While living in Hilton Head Island, S.C., I started coaching kids at night, playing pick-up ball myself, after my daytime (sales) job and quickly figured out that was my true passion and what made me happy.”

Placek went back to school, earned a master’s degree in elementary education from University of South Carolina and began teaching fourth grade and coaching soccer, basketball and some baseball at the youth level.

Once his family moved to his wife’s (Kendra) hometown, Philadelphia, he continued coaching youth in all three sports and then started coaching more girls basketball at the middle school level. He still coached youth girls basketball (first - fifth grades) in addition to Harriton High and Philly Roots (fifth - 11th grades).

He coaches underneath the legendary Chris Wielgus at both Harriton High and for Philly Roots. She has been inducted into three hall of fames and is a basketball encyclopedia, said Placek, a stay-at-home dad for his three daughters (11, 8, 7) since 2013.

Placek, who teamed up with Brandon Dickinson, Tony Wooden, and Bosnians Mirza Salkic and Ricki Isabegovic as the starters for the 1996 season, said most teams in the Philly suburbs have had at least 10 games during the COVID-19 season. Their conference played an 11-game conference-teams-only schedule and a conference tournament. Harriton lost in the semifinals.

Placek said Harriton just got board approval to play in the district tournament, which is similar to regionals in Illinois, he said, to qualify for the state tournament. With the pandemic, the state officials shrunk the field in each classification and only the district champion moves on to the state tournament. In normal years multiple teams from Harriton’s district would qualify for the state tournament.

“We’re all still required to wear masks around here, but other parts of the state do not require masks so the state tourney could be interesting when teams from various regions are matched up against each other,” Placek said.

Kevin Hieronymus is the BCR Sports Editor. Contact him at khieronymus@bcrnews.com.