Madison East selects new boys head basketball coach

By Jacob Link, Eastside News

Madison East High School announced May 29 that Ryan Sheehy was hired as the new head boys basketball coach, succeeding longtime head coach Matt Miota.

Miota retired after the 2023-24 season following 14 years at the helm of the Purgolders, where he accumulated 180 wins, a Big 8 Conference championship in 2019 and an appearance in the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association semifinals in 2015.

Sheehy said his first impression of the East boys’ basketball team is that they want to get to work as soon as possible.

“I’ve had people reaching out to me asking what they can work on,” Sheehy said. “That’s just something that I’m super appreciative of. I’m extremely excited and feel blessed already to be coming into a program where a lot of individuals are hungry, a lot of the individuals want to get to work, and I’m excited to be a part of it.”

Sheehy, who grew up in Milton, comes to East from Somerset Academy in North Las Vegas, Nevada, where he was the assistant boys basketball coach and a health/physical education teacher for the last year.

From 2022-23, Sheehy was the head coach at Pleasant Grove High School in Elk Grove, California. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree from UW-Oshkosh and a Master of Education degree from the University of Missouri, Sheehy began his coaching career in the California Community College Athletic Association with De Anza College (California) from 2017-20 before joining Kilgore College (Texas) in the National Junior College Athletic Association for the 2021-22 season.

Sheehy said his main goal with the program is to prepare student-athletes for life after high school.

“(At) all the areas that I’ve been at, and all the levels that I’ve been at, something that sticks out to me is that these individuals just aren’t prepared, as they should be, in my opinion for what comes next after high school,” Sheehy said. “Yes, we want to win games, we want to put up banners. But I also want to have a focus on preparing them for what’s next and helping them become better individuals off of the floor as well.”