The gym was packed, and one of the state’s best players was on the other sideline. As Rick Wagner led his West Allis Hale basketball team out of the locker room for a sectional playoff game his senior year of high school, he kept saying the same phrase over and over.
“It’s time,” Wagner said. “It’s time.”
A quiet kid from a blue-collar suburb 15 minutes outside of Milwaukee, Wagner never was much into the rah-rah speech. Whether it was on the football field, where he starred as a tight end in Hale’s option offense, or the basketball court, where he traveled the country with a select AAU team, Wagner put his head down and churned out a workmanlike performance every day.