“Hungry Louie” would be a proud man today, even if he wouldn’t be completely satisfied.
Louis Weber always insisted his five children would become teachers and the three boys would coach, and coach well. Weber, a perfectionist’s perfectionist when it came to his kids, always demanded they excel in whatever they did.
So if he had not died about 17 years ago, Weber no doubt would be feeling pretty good about the rolls his middle son, Bruce, and his youngest son, Dave, are on as head basketball coaches.
Bruce Weber had led Illinois to its first undisputed Big Ten championship since 1952 and the No. 12 spot in the AP poll in his first year in Champaign.
Last season Dave Weber’s Glenbrook North High School team finished third in the Class AA state tournament. Glenbrook North (25-3) plays Schaumburg on Wednesday in a sectional semifinal game at Buffalo Grove.
“He’d be very proud of us,” Dave acknowledged about his father the day of Illinois’ game against Purdue last week. “But he’d be telling us what to do right now.
“He’d be at the Purdue game, giving Bruce some suggestions.”
Father’s roots
Louis Weber was not shy about offering an opinion or shooting a basketball. It was the latter trait, which he displayed as a star at Milwaukee’s North Division High School about six decades ago, that spawned his nickname.
Weber, his wife Dawn said, had the basketball ability but not the grades to secure a college scholarship offer. He arrived in the U.S. from Austria as a child, and his parents had not emphasized academics and spoke German at home, Dawn said.
So Weber got a job at a Milwaukee manufacturing company, eventually working in sales. He and Dawn raised their kids–Jan, Ron, Bruce, Carrie and Dave–in a small three-bedroom home in a working-class neighborhood on the city’s north side.
His lost opportunity ate at Hungry Louie, and stoked his almost fanatical resolve that his children would attend college, get their degrees and teach other people’s kids. Teachers, he told his children, helped others and got summers off too.
“He basically told us, `You’re going to be a teacher and a coach,'” Bruce said, “and you didn’t mess with my dad. We all went into education.”
All five kids also had to play musical instruments. The girls played clarinet, the boys trumpet. Bruce made the all-city band team as a high school freshman, to his chagrin.
“It was going to take time away from sports,” he said.
The kids could quit music, though, once they played a varsity sport.
“Dave made the varsity baseball team as a freshman,” Bruce said. “He got to quit before the rest of us.”
Discipline was paramount to Louis Weber. His kids, he’d say, would not miss school.
When one did stay home because of illness, no one told Hungry Louie. His wife made sure the transgressor was dressed by the time Weber got home from work.
“We always had that fear factor of him,” Bruce said. “We respected him and feared him a little bit.”
Weber took an active role in his sons’ athletic lives, coaching them in basketball before they entered high school, though not more than one of them at a time because of the difference in their ages. Ron was born in 1951, Bruce in ’56 and Dave in ’60.
Bruce and Dave played for him on a team called the Whiz Kids, which competed in Milwaukee recreation leagues.
Hungry Louie coached like he lived, intensely and aggressively. He sometimes coached while standing on his team’s bench.
“He was a very dominating person, boisterous and demanding,” Dave said. “He was probably tougher than any coach I played for.
“Dad always said `Hustle,’ and you always gave 100 percent. He knew how to teach you to play hard.”
Always active
Playing, and playing hard, seemed to come naturally for the three brothers. Their childhood years were an endless procession of pickup basketball, baseball and football games everywhere from the alley behind their house to parks and recreation centers.
If they weren’t playing, they might be watching a Braves baseball game or a Marquette practice or game.
“That’s the memory of my life,” Dave said. “I remember in the winter on weekends, we drove wherever there was an open gym–Ron, Bruce, me and two friends.
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“We played against anyone we could find. We weren’t great, but we would challenge anyone.”
Often they would challenge each other. The entire Weber family was and is tightly knit, but the boys were competitive.
“They got along well,” their mother said, “except they sometimes would fight and break a bed.”
The competition included makeshift Wiffle ball and basketball contests in their basement. Their father often would join them for games of two-on-two alley hoops.
“We had some very physical games,” Bruce said. “There were no fouls called, especially when my dad committed one.”
Bruce was the most competitive of the boys and the most impetuous. Dawn Weber estimates he took 11 trips to the emergency room; Bruce says it was 14.
One time Bruce received numerous stitches after hitting his head on a beam during a game of basement H-O-R-S-E. Another time he injured a knee when a car struck him while he was riding his bicycle to the playground. Bruce said he didn’t tell his parents for fear he might miss a basketball game, but the car’s driver informed his parents of the accident, and Bruce was off to the emergency room again.
“He never backed down,” Dave said. “I thought he’d get killed sometimes. He’s still that way–very intense and competitive.”
Just like his dad
Bruce was the closest to his father in temperament and the most likely to stand up to him on matters of sports. He was known as “Little Louie,” though he is a calmer version of his dad.
“Ron and I are much more laid back and conservative,” Dave said. “Bruce is much more boisterous and aggressive, and he coaches that way.
“He battled my father all the time. Ron and I listened and kind of backed away then. Bruce got into arguments with him.”
As the oldest son, Ron was the boys’ leader and their coach on playgrounds as part of a summer job. Dave, who benefited from playing against older kids, was the most talented athlete of the three and the only one to receive an athletic scholarship.
“Ron got us organized, Bruce did the dirty work on the court and I shot,” Dave said.
All three brothers played baseball and basketball at Marshall High School. Hungry Louie was no longer their coach, but he kept on pushing.
“Those kids did not want to go home after a game because Louie would be talking about a free throw miss in a 20-point victory,” said longtime Sheboygan (Wis.) North coach Tom Desotell, a friend of the Weber family for 40 years.
Dave was the Milwaukee City Conference most valuable basketball player as a senior in 1978. He enrolled at Bowling Green but quickly transferred to Wisconsin-Milwaukee and then switched to Weber State after UWM dropped from Division I to Division III.
Ron and Bruce both attended UWM. Bruce didn’t play basketball there, and Ron played there briefly. Each became a volunteer coach at a local high school before graduation.
Jan became a teacher and administrator in the Chicago area. Carrie died in an automobile accident 25 years ago.
Ron spent 27 years as a high school coach, the last 23 as a successful head coach at Waupaca (Wis.) High. He retired from coaching three years ago but still teaches physical education there.
Bruce coached briefly at a Milwaukee high school before starting his career in college coaching in 1979 at Western Kentucky.
After graduating from Weber State in 1983, Dave started an 11-year career as a college assistant coach that culminated with seven seasons at Eastern Illinois.
By 1994, though, he was married with a small child, and he gave up his dream of becoming a college head coach for the more stable life of a high school coach and physical education teacher. He became an assistant at Glenbrook North for a year before taking over as head coach.
“In college when you get to March, all you do is look in the paper to see who was fired,” he said. “I did that 11 years and thought, `Do I want to do that my whole life?’
“I decided it was best for my family to stay in the Midwest and get a coaching job in the Chicago area.”
A different path
Bruce, however, stayed the course, working as an assistant coach at Purdue from 1980-98 before spending five years as head coach at Southern Illinois.
“I think stability appeals more to Dave and me, where Bruce puts it out there and whatever happens, happens,” Ron said. “He’s more like my dad.
“I think Bruce is not afraid to fail. I don’t think he thought he could fail.”
Bruce rarely takes a day off. Like his father, he has a relentless work ethic, a trait he acquired as a youngster.
“I was driven, just like my dad,” he said. “Always going.”
Bruce said he was tempted to offer Dave an assistant’s job at SIU and Illinois but doubts his brother, who now has four children 2 through 11, would be interested and fears coaching together would invite too much scrutiny.
Bruce holds out some hope they can coach together once he becomes more established as a college coach, but Dave doubts he’ll return to college coaching, even though he calls himself a college basketball “junkie.”
“It would be too demanding on my family and my relationship with Bruce,” he said.
Complete Weber family gatherings are only occasional because the demands of Division I coaching keep Bruce, who has three children of his own, busy. Bruce and Dave, however, talk frequently by phone, especially about basketball.
“He has helped me tremendously,” Dave said. “Our whole offense is based on his philosophy. We have plays called Illinois, Champaign and Saluki.”
Glenbrook North’s top player is Jon Scheyer, who is regarded as the state’s No. 1 sophomore prospect and is a prime recruiting target for numerous college coaches, including Bruce Weber.
Dave acknowledges that places him in a “difficult” position. He worries that some college coaches may believe he is favoring Illinois and that Illini fans will expect him to push Scheyer there.
“I’ve almost gone overboard to accommodate other schools so they don’t feel I’m not communicating with them because my brother is the coach at Illinois,” said Dave, who finds the trickiest part of the situation is deciding what, if anything, to tell coaches who don’t know who his brother is. “I don’t know how much [Jon] will be influenced by Bruce’s being my brother.”
Dave said he has discussed the situation with the Scheyer family.
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“We’ve just said Jon and his family have to make a decision, and whatever is best for him is what he’ll do,” he said.
Bruce and Dave’s biggest fan, of course, is 80-year-old Dawn Weber. She has been to both sons’ games this season and keeps files with articles about their careers.
“We try to get her the positive articles,” Ron said.
Dawn was always the more easygoing of the parents, but she still gets worked up and worried about her boys’ coaching careers.
When she watches Illini games on TV, she cheers for Bruce’s players to stop their opponents even during replays, and at times she has yelled loudly enough to set off the security alarm. Her basement is filled with trophies, posters and pictures from all three sons’ playing and coaching careers.
Dawn, though, is no Hungry Louie. She was one of a large contingent of family and friends who watched Illinois lose to Wisconsin by 20 points Jan. 24 in Madison.
“After the game my mom said, `Oh, you played well,'” Bruce said. “I said, `No, Mom, we didn’t.’
“She’s always very positive.”
Louis Weber died of a heart attack before Bruce or Dave became a head coach. A picture of Hungry Louie giving Ron advice after a Waupaca game is a hint of what the two are missing.
“Louie would be just reveling in this,” Desotell said. “Oh, he’d be smiling, but he’d be dying with every loss.”