In Their Words is a weekly feature appearing Sundays in The Blade's sports section. Blade sports writer Don Emmons talked with Springfield boys basketball coach Tim Reiser, who was a standout player at Napoleon High and the University of Toledo.

Besides spending one season playing professional basketball in Europe, Tim Reiser has spent most of his time in northwest Ohio.

The Napoleon native has spent the past 23 years coaching at Springfield High where he also serves as a guidance counselor.

Reiser played at the University of Toledo after a stellar high school career at Napoleon, where he was named Ohio Class AA player of the year as a senior in 1980.

Reiser led the Wildcats to the regional final two straight years. In his senior season, he averaged 26 points per game. He chose UT over numerous colleges and was a four-year starter for the Rockets.

A prolific scorer in high school, Reiser became the ultimate distributor in college. His 762 career assists still rank No. 1 all-time at UT. He logged 3,941 minutes of playing time between 1980-84, which ranks second all-time.

Reiser's coaching career at Springfield has resulted in three Northern Lakes League championships (1989-90, 1990-91, 1996-97). Reiser, 47, and his wife, Krista live in Monclova.

"AT NAPOLEON, we went to the regional finals my junior year in 1979 and senior year in 1980. My brother's [Mike's] team won the state championship in 1981. That was neat for them. It was tough on me because it was one of my dreams to play in Columbus.

"I played with a lot of great guys and coach Fred Church was a great coach and I learned a lot from him. I was player of the year in Ohio. That was a neat honor. My last [regular-season] game I scored 58, and I remember that one against Bedford. That was a fun night. We had no 3-pointer then. One of my teammates looked back at that game and said I would have had 82 or 83 points because most of my shots were from beyond the 3-point line that night."

"I WAS RECRUITED by all the MAC schools and I had an offer from Ohio State, but I liked the idea of the University of Toledo and playing for coach (Bob) Nichols, and I wanted to stay close to home so my parents could come watch me play.

"It was an awesome experience to play for coach Nichols and more so, to get my education and the people I met and the relationships I've been able to keep from that experience. I was freshman of the year, and we won a MAC championship that year. We weren't lucky enough to win another championship after that but we had a lot of success.

"I just remember playing in Savage Hall, which was called Centennial Hall at that time. We would get 8,000 or 9,000 in there for each home game. It was pretty loud in there. It was definitely a tremendous advantage for us to play in there."

"I THINK [Savage Arena] is beautiful. I was talking to a couple of the guys I played with and I just wished we could go back in time to play in that facility. They did a tremendous job recreating the whole arena. It's a nice recruiting tool for coach [Gene] Cross. Hopefully, people will give him time to get his system in place and his own recruiting class."

"I PLAYED IN Europe for a year right after college. I came back after my first year in Europe, and my dad told me you're not going to sit around here doing nothing for the whole summer. I sold cars for one day and said I don't know if I can do this. Luckily I had my degree, and that spring I worked as a substitute teacher and we didn't settle on a contract to go back to Europe.

"Pat Cunningham was the athletic director at Springfield, and the head coaching job came open and I interviewed for it and luckily they gave me the opportunity to coach and I took it. It's been a very rewarding experience."

"[Playing in Europe] I kind of got a taste of what it would be like to play here in the NBA. They had the 3-pointer, and I was the MVP of the league after averaging 35 points a game. It was nice to get paid to play basketball. I got to travel a lot to see parts of the world I would have never seen.

"I knew I wasn't probably going to be good enough to make it here and I knew I had to get on with my career. It was tough to decide, but I had to weigh the opportunities and I knew I had to sooner or later get going with my [teaching] career."

"WHEN I LOOK back on the whole situation I'm glad that I did what I did because the chances of playing in the NBA are so remote. The connections I made at UT and the people that I met I don't know if you can put a price tag on that. That really enabled me to get in education and coaching at the high school level, especially at the age I was. I started coaching at age 25."

"I TELL OUR players that I scored a lot in high school and my role going into college totally changed. I went from being the main scorer in high school to being a true point guard in college and understanding the role I had to take. I had a lot of people ask me why didn't I score a lot more in college and I say I was asked to do what I needed to do by coach Nichols and run the offense. I accepted the role and I became more of a distri-buting ball and assist guy instead of being a scorer. I took my shots when I had them but I was smart enough also to know that if I wanted playing time I was going to do what I was told to do.

"The big thing that I started to instill in these guys [at Springfield] is act like a gentleman on and off the floor, treat people with respect and work hard."

First Published March 1, 2009, 11:49 a.m.