Husband vs. Wife: Karen Ade and McAuley Get Best of Brian Ade and Stagg in Girls Basketball Rivalry

No, Brian Ade isn’t going to make his wife sleep on the couch for the next two weeks.

“I’ll be the good loser,” Ade said following Stagg’s 44-37 girls basketball loss to Mother McAuley on Tuesday in Palos Hills.

He is one of the assistant coaches for the Chargers. His better half, Karen Ade, is head coach of the Mighty Macs. And she had some coaching to do, frantically working the Xs and Os as McAuley rallied from an 18-9 first-quarter deficit to pull out the victory.

“It was a great game between our two programs,” Brian Ade said. “It usually is that way, a hard-fought, physical contest. They wanted it a little more. Hopefully, our girls will learn from it. We have conference coming up, and that is what’s most important to us.”

Actually, anything that has to do with basketball is important to the Ades.

Karen played high school ball at Mother McAuley and has returned to coach her alma mater. Brian was recruited out of the halls to join the Stagg staff more than 15 years ago.

“I was substituting here, and Missy Mason, who is the lady running around running everything, just cornered me one day and said, ‘I heard you’re looking for a job,’ ” Brian Ade said. “I wanted to get into coaching basketball—not really girls basketball.

“But she asked me if I wanted to coach freshman girls basketball in 1994. I said, ‘Sure, I’ll do that.' And here I am. It’s been a lot of fun. I enjoy working with the kids. There really is nothing like it.”

Brian and Karen invite girls from both of their teams over to their house on a regular basis for pasta parties and team-building events. So, they know each other’s personnel as well as each other’s coaching modus operandi.

When their teams meet, both play to win.

“It’s fun—it’s probably more nerve-wracking than anything,” Karen Ade said. “Because I think I probably get more emotional about this game than I should. I should just let it be a game, but I’m too competitive. I don’t want to lose to my husband.

“We know each other’s teams inside and out. I’ve gone and watched his kids play. He’s helped me with tapes and scouting and vice versa. So, we all know all the girls on both teams.”

Karen and Brian have one son, Ryan, who is 20 months old and already learning to dribble a basketball. His smile was Brian’s consolation prize following the final horn on Tuesday. And the Ade basketball family nearly will double in size in May when Karen is expected to deliver twin boys.

Imagine the whole bunch rocking one day to a retro billboard hit, “Whoomp! (There It Is).”

The Ades’ TV already is tuned to basketball 24/7.

“We usually have a game on, and we’re usually making comments, good and bad things, usually watching things that coaches do and strategy,” Brian Ade said. “We talk things over. We don’t have exactly the same philosophies. But a lot of things are similar.”

The story of the Ades’ coaching rivalry is one that has trickled down through the ranks to the girls on both sides of the non-conference girls basketball matchup. McAuley vs. Stagg is game that is circled on the calendar—and not just by Karen Ade.

“She jokingly said the other day at practice there was no way she was losing to her husband,” Mother McAuley senior guard Susie Durkin said. “So, I guess it gives us a little something extra to play for.”

"It's always a good battle, I guess, to decide some home ownership rights, who gets rights to what rooms," Stagg coach Bill Turner said.