After years of being involved in basketball at many levels, Arlington native Alex Eisenberg finally received the opportunity to be a high-school head coach this past season.
The Washington-Liberty High School graduate was in charge of the private-school Oakcrest School Chargers girls team in Vienna as first-year head coach.
“I love coaching and was glad to have the opportunity to be a head coach here,” Eisenberg told ARLnow about Oakcrest.
He led the team to a winning 11-10 overall record, as it enjoyed a strong start with four straight victories.
Oakcrest is a Division I team and received votes early in the season in the weekly statewide rankings.
Three of the Chargers’ losses (two by a combined seven points) were against Seton School, which finished the season 21-5 and ranked sixth in the final Division II state poll.
Oakcrest also lost two close games each against Fredericksburg Christian and Trinity Christian, both also ranked in the final Division II poll and making the state tournament.
“We were very competitive and had some good players,” Eisenberg said. “We also had some injury problems that hurt us.”
The team’s stop scorers were junior Kate Newsome (16.4 points per game) and senior Mary Mehan (11.6).
With 810 career points, Newsome will have the chance to reach the 1,000-point milestone next season under Eisenberg. This past season, she scored a single-game school record 32 points.
Prior to getting the job at Oakcrest, Eisenberg had been an assistant coach with the boys public-school program at Yorktown High School in Arlington for eight years. He had been the head junior-varsity coach for six seasons under two different head coaches.
The 2003 Washington-Liberty graduate coached those JV squads to a 58-30 overall record.
Eisenberg also has been a winning head coach in the Arlington Travel Basketball (ATB) program for multiple years. He coached an eighth-grade A Division girls team to a Fairfax County Youth Basketball League tournament championship this past winter.
“Alex is a very good coach. Teams are lucky to have him,” Jim Sedor, another top coach in ATB, told ARLnow.
