Cordero Barkley has been attempting for years to get Green Bay Notre Dame girls basketball coach Sara Rohde to join his Purple Aces AAU program.
Every year he would ask, and every year he would be turned down.
“It’s been since like 2014,” said Barkley, who is the Purple Aces’ development director and a coach. “She and [my wife Erin Barkley] coached together at Notre Dame. Literally, every year since then.”
If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Or, maybe, like 12 times.
Rohde finally is joining the AAU ranks. She will serve as an associate head coach this year for Purple Aces players in sixth grade and be their head coach when they are in seventh grade next year.
Rohde can’t fully jump in right now after making a commitment in the fall to coach her youngest daughter’s soccer team.
Her oldest daughter, Reese, has shown big promise in both basketball and soccer. She will join her mother with the Purple Aces on the sixth-grade team but is expected to play in only one or two tournaments.
Rohde plans to attend practices and tournaments when her schedule allows, but this year serves a bigger purpose in getting to know players and parents and to talk about next season’s tryouts.
What made her decide to make the leap into AAU after all this time?
“Mainly, my children,” Rohde said. “I just think it’s probably a more appropriate time for them to start doing AAU basketball.
“I just love to coach basketball. If I could do that as my full-time job and get the best of both worlds, coach basketball and get paid to do it, that would be my dream job. I really enjoy coaching, and my children are playing. I want them to have a great experience. Not that they couldn’t have that with another coach, but I do like to be involved with them and their experiences.”
Rohde is one of several with the Purple Aces who have ties to the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay women’s basketball program as either a former player or coach.
The list includes Erin Barkley, Amanda Leonhard-Perry, Hailey Oskey, Natalie McNeal and Liz Grzesk.
Both Rohde and Leonhard-Perry played and were assistant coaches at UWGB.
The Purple Aces’ connection with UWGB goes even deeper.
They had three former players who were notable contributors to the Phoenix this season in former Green Bay Preble standout Carley Duffney, Green Bay Notre Dame’s Gracie Grzesk and Lakeland’s Kristina Ouimette.
Sara Rohde is one of the top coaches in the state
Rohde brings one of the state’s most decorated prep basketball résumés with her to the Purple Aces.
She has developed Notre Dame into a powerhouse since being hired to replace Bill Farrell in May 2011.
Rohde has won more than 320 games in 15 seasons, leading the Tritons to five WIAA Division 2 state championships and nine state appearances.
Notre Dame qualified for D1 state this season for the first time in program history after being elevated from D2 before the 2024-25 campaign.
Rohde was a standout guard at UWGB while playing for Kevin Borseth from 2000 to 2003, scoring 1,115 points and graduating as one of the program’s all-time-best 3-point shooters.
She served as an assistant under Borseth for the Phoenix from 2004 to 2006 before playing professionally in Spain for a few seasons.
Rohde returned to coaching in 2009 as the eighth-grade boys coach at Parkview Middle School in Ashwaubenon before joining the Notre Dame girls program as the junior varsity coach the following season.
She was a three-sport star at Rapid River High School in Michigan in basketball, volleyball, and track and field and is considered by many to be an Upper Peninsula legend after scoring 1,758 career points on the hardwood.
Still, whether she would eventually join an AAU program was anyone’s guess.
“You just never know,” said Cordero Barkley, who played for the UWGB men’s team from 2005 to 2010. “We are big into multisports, and her kid clearly plays multiple sports. I just never knew what her interests would be. We built our relationship over a decade. Her, Erin, myself. Where when she did decide to make the leap into this space and bring her kid into it, we had built our relationship and knows what we are about.”
The Purple Aces are loaded with well-known local coaches, but Rohde adds another notable name to the list. She has been named The Associated Press state coach of the year three times.
“I think for the kids, just to get that basketball knowledge from someone who has been at every level,” Cordero Barkley said about what Rohde brings to the program. “She has traveled internationally. She has coached at the Division I level, she has won at every level she has been at.
“I think, for me, that’s the biggest piece. The competitiveness. The leadership. Just the presence that she brings to a room. Our young women are going to prosper just being in her presence. And then we have a lot of young coaches that she is going to have a chance to spend time with and mentor.”
Considering Rohde has enjoyed so much success, it remains to be seen if her Purple Aces team looks, and plays, the way Notre Dame has for more than a decade.
“Maybe there will be some more opportunities to do different things, too, depending on the level of play,” Rohde said. “I think in AAU, you are trying to expose them as basketball players. But as a coach, I want to put them in the best situations to be successful.
“Some of my philosophies will still come into play. I’m sure we will play fast and have a defensive-minded approach. Hopefully, play well on offense and share the ball. But it is going to be a different style of play than high school basketball.”
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay Notre Dame’s Sara Rohde to coach AAU basketball with Purple Aces
Reporting by Scott Venci, Green Bay Press-Gazette / Green Bay Press-Gazette
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
