ABOVE: Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Truman/Martin Luther boys basketball head coach Bryan Nowicki watches over a team practice on Monday, Dec 29, 2025, at the Granada-Huntley-East Chain High School gymnasium.

GRANADA – Bryan Nowicki wants to establish a foundation.

The first-year Granada Huntley East Chain/Truman/Martin Luther boys basketball head coach has been tasked with bringing a winning culture to the program after being hired this past fall.

The position came after Nowicki began helping out the GHEC/T/ML team during summer workouts. As the months progressed and the position continued its vacancy, the Jaguars decided to insert Nowicki as the next coach of the boys basketball program.

His decision to take the job wasn’t an immediate yes. After discussing it further with his family, Nowicki’s long-time goal of moving into a head coaching position became true entering the winter season.

“It was a really tough decision for me,” Nowicki said. “There’s not really a good time to transition, but it was here and the opportunity was there. I kind of always wanted to move into the head coaching role, but it just came along earlier than I would try to look for it at the time.”

Nowicki has already spent multiple seasons coaching in different assistant positions for the Jaguars.

From 2017 to 2019 Nowicki was placed as the coach for GHEC/T/ML’s boy’s basketball C-squad. He jumped to the girls side of the sport that following winter, initially taking the junior high position before moving to junior varsity a couple years later.

Nowicki’s move to the Jaguars has been an entire revamp of basketball ideology, implementing a defense minded scheme that instills the fundamentals over anything else.

However, this process takes time. With an entire revamp of offensive and defensive concepts, the transition to immediate on-court success isn’t always seen, especially with a group of new players on the varsity team.

“Like we are doing [reteaching a new system] now, which is the hard part,” Nowicki said. “I think a little bit of the reason we have our ups and downs in games. … I got the varsity boys learning a lot of new things and it’s hard to mesh all of that together so quickly. I’m hoping towards the end of the year it can come together.”

Nowicki has worked with assistant coaches Cory Riewe and Spencer Chirpich throughout the season to instill his philosophies at junior varsity, making the next group of athletes transition easier when they move to the next level.

This process starts in practice, relaying information, drills, and ideas that can be passed down throughout the basketball program.

“We are doing that more and more,” Nowicki said. “The beginning of the year was just learning the fundamentals and getting them to learn the concept of how we want to play defense. …Moving on now, we will implement more for the JV of what we want to do in the full court aspect of the game, challenging the younger squads to step up a little bit.”

The Jaguars have had two seasons – 2020-2021 and 2022-2023 – above .500 over the past five years. With plans of developing long-term success that branches in all levels of the program, Nowicki plans on changing this during his tenure. Implementing a base for all athletes to work off is key to any future success the Jaguars want to see.