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Sycamore High School on Wednesday announced Ethan Franklin will take over the boys basketball program, while Kevin Bickley will coach boys soccer, in addition to his current girls soccer duties.
Franklin has been the head boys coach at Genoa-Kingston for the past four years and has been an assistant at both G-K and Stillman Valley. He played basketball and graduated from DeKalb and attended both Kishwaukee College and NIU.
As coach of the Cogs, Franklin already has faced DeKalb, but he said it will be different going against the Barbs and assistant coach Julian McElroy as the head coach of their rival.
“JuJu is just like a brother to me, one of my best friends,” said Franklin, who often attended DeKalb games the past few years when not busy with his G-K duties. “So I don’t like having to coach against him. But I’ve played in the game twice as a player, and now I get to coach the other team, that’s pretty cool. I’d be lying if I said I’m not looking forward to that.”
Franklin takes over for Andrew Stacy, who started his second stint with the program in 2019. He also coached from 2011-2016, winning a pair of regionals. Sycamore’s last regional crown was in 2017.
The Cogs went 11-19 in Franklin’s first year, but went 22-10 this season, and haven’t had a losing season since that first year.
Franklin likes to run an up-tempo system on both sides of the ball and said Stacy already has laid the groundwork, especially on defense.
“It’s a great school district,” Franklin said. “There’s a lot of great athletes there already. They have great facilities, the field house is a huge thing. Just being able to compete in 3A is a great opportunity.”
Franklin will also be a math teacher in the Sycamore district, as he was in Genoa.
“We are very excited to have Ethan as our next head boys basketball coach,” Sycamore athletic director Chauncey Carrick said in a statement. “Ethan is a very high-energy guy that loves the sport of basketball. He has shown that he can run a program at a high level, and we are looking forward to having Ethan lead our program.”
Bickley has been the girls soccer coach at Sycamore since 2018. He was also an assistant at Kaneland and, before that he was head coach at Kishwaukee College from 2011-2013.
He takes over for David Bachta, who took over as coach in 2014 and led the Spartans to regional titles the past two seasons.
“I’m pretty excited about it,” Bickley said. “When I interviewed for the girls’ job I told them I wanted to be a part of the boys’ program and the success they had. ... I kind of went back and forth whether I wanted to do both. But it just made sense to do both. The boys have been very successful the past few years, and to be a part of that‚ I’m really excited.”