McDonald’s Coach with Michalski to guide East in Houston

Fred Sauro, son Scotty Sauro, both coaches

Williamstown girls basketball coach Fred Sauro,  brother- in-law of Michael Michalski, Class of 1969, will coach the East girls in the McDonald’s All-American Game in Houston on April 1.

Fred is the second-winningest coach in state girls basketball history with 504 victories, just 38 behind long-time John Marshall coach Stan Blankenship. Including his time coaching boys basketball,  Fred has coached high school basketball for 51 years.

He coached Williamstown girls to the state title in 2003.

Fred’s assistants in Houston will be Gilmer County coach Amy Chapman and Sauro’s former Williamtown player Ann Seufer Ferguson,  head coach at Thomasville High School in North Carolina and at 1,000-point star at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Fred is married to Connie McGunnnis Day, a Fairmont State graduate and retired physical education teacher.  Their son, Scotty, also is a successful basketball coach. They have a daughter living in West Virginia.  

Mike Michalski, son of Ramona Fullen Michalski, Class of 1949, and the late Frank Michalski, who started with the Class of 1949, lives in Monongah with wife Janet Sauro Michalski, a graduate of Fairmont West and Fairmont State.  

Mike and Janet’s children are Brandon Michael Michalski, married to Lynisa King Michalski and living in Arlington, Virginia; and Tony Michalski, married to Holly Turkett Michalski and living in Fairmont.

My late wife was a Turkette (with an “e” on the end; various branches went with or without the “e”). My Cinderella (WV) girl, Monnie Elizabeth Turkette Olesky, is buried in Northlawn Memorial Gardens in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Eventually, I will join her under our double grave marker with “WV” under each of our names so that everyone who visits the cemetery will know that we still are Mountaineer  fans.

To continue the Michalski-Olesky coincidences,  Ramona is called Monie by many of her Monongah High friends. My late wife’s birth name, mistakenly filled out by a busy doctor as he rushed through a week’s worth of birth certificates, was Monia and she was called Monie and, later and on her grave marker, Monnie.

Fred Sauro twice has helped coach the North in the girls North-South All-Star Basketball Game in West Virginia.

To read the full Charleston Gazette article, go to

https://www.wvgazettemail.com/sports/prep_sports/basketball/girls_basketball/girls-basketball-williamstown-s-fred-sauro-to-coach-the-east/article_a4de9f69-791b-5b54-838a-20de7b73ee8d.html?fbclid=IwAR1CXGg0kh9sK6HVV6YYomhoSjna43k5QBA0yM-EpYESBzIARGHHaJvb0c4