Boys and Girls Club: Red Bank, Sourlis Beat Familiar Foe for 700th Win

LITTLE SILVER — When George Sourlis was first offered his first head coaching job four decades ago, his reaction is one that now makes him cringe just a little bit.

“Girls Basketball? I don’t think I want to coach girls.”

That was the reaction Sourlis recalls after being offered the Rumson-Fair Haven girls basketball head coaching job as a 23-year-old by the late Art Harmon and nearly four decades later, Sourlis had to convince a group of boys players at Red Bank Regional that their new coach could do for them what he did for the Rumson-Fair Haven girls program for 30 seasons.

According to current Bucs senior Zayier Dean, it does not take long for a player to buy in to what Sourlis is selling.

“If you’re at his practice, you can see it,” said Dean, who transferred to Red Bank from Ocean Township for his junior season in 2023-24. “He works us so hard and he demands so much out of us. It’s only right for us to respect him and go hard for him because at the end of the day, he goes hard for us.

“Every single day he comes in, he asks us how we’re doing, he shows that he really cares about us. When you have a coach who really cares about you, you want to give him your all.”

An approach that led to 654 wins in 30 years as Rumson’s girls basketball coach has now gained traction just four miles west on Ridge Road at Red Bank Bank Regional, where the Bucs boys program has transformed into one of the Shore’s best public-school teams in less than three full seasons on the job for Sourlis.

On Tuesday night, the school celebrated Sourlis’s first milestone as a boys basketball coach and it is a milestone that just one Shore Conference coach has ever reached. On top of that, he reached it against the team from his former school and with a championship on the line.

With his team’s trademark intensity and execution on display, Sourlis guided his team to a 55-51 win over Rumson-Fair Haven Tuesday night that completed a season sweep of Red Bank’s rival and clinched the Shore Conference Class A Coastal division championship for the Bucs. For Sourlis, the win made him the Shore Conference’s second member of the 700-win club for basketball coaches.

Final: Red Bank 55, Rumson 51. George Sourlis notches his 700th win against the school where he won 654 games as its girls coach. Red Bank also clinches its 2nd straight outright division title. pic.twitter.com/7KIilGmLFW

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 5, 2025

“I never thought I would do it when I retired,” Sourlis said of winning 700. “It didn’t matter. I was content, because I knew I had a great group of kids. Now, I’m going to their weddings and their christenings and that was my new highlight.”

Red Bank Catholic girls basketball coach Joe Montano is the only other Shore Conference head basketball coach to eclipse 700 coaching wins and he has done it entirely with the Caseys girls team. Sourlis was the all-time Shore Conference wins leader in either boys or girls basketball when he retired after passing Christian Brothers Academy legend Ed Wicelinski (625 wins).

Sourlis collected the vast majority of his wins as the girls coach at Rumson, but his second act in high school coaching has given him a chance to join his friend and former rival Montano in the exclusive club while also restoring Red Bank’s boys program among the Shore Conference’s best programs.

“I have been doing this a long time and I have had a lot of great assistant coaches and players that value winning as a standard than the hope,” Sourlis said. “I think that when you do that for a long time, great things happen. We value our standards, how we do things, how we act on and off the floor, and the winning will come.”

Tuesday clinched the Bucs their second straight division championship and with a record of 17-3, Red Bank is now three wins shy of a second straight 20-win season. In Sourlis’s first year on the job in Little Silver, he and his team labored to an 8-15 finish. One year later, with his players steadfast and Sourlis adjusted to the new landscape, Red Bank went 21-5, won the Class B North division championship and reached the NJSIAA Central Jersey Group III championship game.

This season, with three starters back from a year ago, another key transfer in senior Ronald Richardson and a pair of emerging sophomores in Justin Valentino and Will Galligan, Red Bank is hungry for more in 2025. The Bucs are positioned to grab a top-four seed in the Shore Conference Tournament and a top-two seed in the Central Jersey Group III section later this month. Last season, Red Bank lost at home to Howell in the Shore Conference Tournament round of 16 and again at home to Freehold Boro in the Central Group III championship.

“This championship is a great accomplishment for us,” Dean said. “It’s a goal for us, but it’s not the main goal. We still have a lot of work to do, we’ve got to take it one game at a time to accomplish our main goal, which is a state championship.”

This time around, goal is simple: improve on last year’s postseason showings. If Red Bank can do that, it will be a sectional champion and a step closer to a goal that Sourlis spoke about following his latest milestone.

One of the Shore’s great coaching accomplishments of the last half-century was Ken O’Donnell leading Neptune — his alma mater — to overall state championships as the head coach of both the girls and boys basketball teams. O’Donnell won 570 games between the two programs — 230 on the girls side and 340 on the boys — and while Sourlis has surpassed that total number, he would very much like to share the distinction with O’Donnell as the only two coaches at the Shore to win state titles as both a boys and girls head coach.

“He is a mentor of mine,” Sourlis said of O’Donnell. “He has also done something that nobody else has done that I’d like to match here and that is win a state title with the boys and the girls. He is the only one in the Shore to do it, so it would be nice to join a guy like him and someone who I considered a dear friend and is one of the greatest of all time.”

With performances like the one Red Bank authored on Tuesday, the accomplishment may not be so far-fetched. The Bucs held a dangerous Rumson team to 6-for-28 shooting from beyond the three-point line, including a stretch of 17 consecutive misses. Bulldogs leading scorer, 6-foot-9 University of Pennsylvania commit Luke Cruz, scored only four points and did not score after halftime. In the first meeting between the teams — a 46-44 overtime win for Red Bank at Rumson-Fair Haven — Cruz scored 13 points to go with 15 rebounds.

“I’m proud of my boys tonight, because they worked their butts off,” Sourlis said. “They deserved to win tonight, so nobody can say it was handed to us this time.”

Red Bank scored the championship-clinching victory despite a relatively quiet scoring game from Dean, who finished with 12 points, seven rebounds and four assists, and some rust from senior Ryan Fisher, playing in his first game since missing three straight games with a concussion. Fisher put up eight rebounds, five rebounds and five assists, with six of his points coming in the fourth quarter to help close out the win.

With Red Bank’s top two scorers having slow nights, Galligan came up huge off the bench. The sophomore scored a game-high 18 points, with 11 coming during a pivotal second quarter. Rumson led, 15-8, through one quarter thanks to 4-for-9 shooting from beyond the three-point line, but Galligan responded by going 4-for-4 from the floor — including 3-for-3 from three-point range — to catapult Red Bank into the lead. Galligan’s corner three in the final seconds of the half send Red Bank to the locker room ahead, 26-23.

Red Bank leads Rumson 26-23 at half. Big 2nd quarter by Will Galligan, who has 11 points on 4-4 shooting, including 3-3 from 3. pic.twitter.com/MA2hn8EYI5

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) February 5, 2025

“The energy out there was insane,” Galligan said. “The student section, everyone getting hyped. It was just a great game to play in and everybody played great. I made my shots, but it was all about my teammates finding me. Every shot I made came off a pass, so everything was a team effort. I was glad I could step up today for my team.”

While Sourlis never coached the Rumson boys team, coach Chris Champeau and his program are still near and dear to Sourlis and his family. Sourlis’s son, Teddy, won NJSIAA sectional titles as a starting guard at Rumson as a junior and senior in 2017 and 2018.

“My sister, Dorothy, was amazing and talked me into coaching almost 40 years ago, so I guess you could say this was her fault,” Sourlis said. “You could see the family support. My wife and kids are here all the time, so I owe it to them for allowing me to do what I love.”