Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

Anyone who has watched Matt Lesan coach has almost surely noticed something that stands out fairly quickly about the first-year Solon head coach.

“Wow. He’s intense,” a fan seated a couple rows in front of me said while gesturing towards Lesan on Saturday.

To be clear, that comment was made during warmups of Solon’s matchup with rival Regina.

The fan wasn’t wrong.

Lesan coaches with the same energy and passion that made him a standout player as a prep at Solon and later at Upper Iowa University.

That intensity is part of what made Lesan a successful player and now a bright young coach.

It’s also what made Lesan’s postgame comments to me on Saturday so refreshing.

Minutes after Solon used a Carson Shive buzzer beater to down Regina 62-60 Lesan emerged from the locker room handing out hugs to anyone that would take one.

Then, the excitable, energetic coach that poured his passion for his alma mater out on the sidelines for 90 minutes admitted he could have walked off the floor at Regina on Saturday happy with a loss.

Makes perfect sense right?

It does if you know the situation or if you know Lesan.

About 20 feet away from Lesan seated on the Regina bench was Jared Galpin his colleague in the Solon Community School district

The fifth-grade classrooms for Lesan and Galpin inside the Solon Intermediate School are separated by roughly the same distance the two coaches stood from each other on Saturday.

Both in their first years as teachers at Solon and with the obvious common bond of basketball the two quickly became close friends.

“We are very close, very close,” Lesan said. “We talk about basketball all the time. We are always talking about game plans or what we think about this or that and you talk about a great basketball mind, he is a phenomenal coach, one of the best in the area and I have a ton of respect for him and I’ve learned a lot from him already.”

The two coaches talk basketball daily.

I’m guessing the white boards in those classrooms have had a few plays designed on them this winter.

“We have basketball minds,” Galpin said. “We always talk when we have free time and almost always about basketball.”

For 90 minutes on Saturday the two friends were rivals.

Both wanted wins in the worst way.

Regina is a ranked team in 2A with goals of a second straight state tournament trip and Solon was riding a three-game losing streak and smarting for a two-point loss to another rival, Mount Vernon, less than 24 hours early.

The game was exactly what you’d expect from two rivals.

Intense and back and forth it was a chess match filled with coaching adjustments and big swings in momentum.

Regina senior Masen Miller had a herculean 36-point effort but it was Shive’s baseline jumper as time expired that won it for Solon.

Just minutes after Lesan sprinted onto the court pumping his fists to celebrate the win he admitted a loss to Galpin would have left a smile on his face.

“When you coach against someone you are friends with that is one of those games where win or lose we are both going home happy,” Lesan said.

How many times has it been said by a coach following a well-played game or an exciting game?

“It was the type of game you don’t want to see either team lose.”

Usually, those words seem empty.

On Saturday, Lesan meant what he said about coaching against his friend.

“As friends we looked forward to this for a long time because we have so much respect for each other,” Lesan said. “I wasn’t going to walk away from tonight upset.”

High school basketball needs more games like Saturday with high energy, up-tempo offense and nearly as many made 3-pointers (15) as there were turnovers (17).

But mostly it needs more coaches like Galpin and Lesan that understand there is more to playing than just winning and losing.

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