Ep. 36: Coach Chris Fryer, Part 1

Coaching Legend

In this episode, I sit down with Coach Chris Fryer, a legendary figure in Tennessee girls high school basketball. Known for leading his team to a State Championship victory in 2005, Coach Fryer’s impact on the sport and the lives of his players is profound.

I had a unique sideline seat to witness his coaching methods and style during my junior and senior years of high school—details you'll have to listen to understand. We explore his transition from coaching football to girls basketball, a shift that not only transformed his career but also deeply influenced the lives of countless families over his remarkable 22-year tenure.

Additionally, we discuss the man behind the scenes—Coach Fryer as a devoted family man and the values he upheld throughout his coaching journey.

Tune in to hear the compelling story of a coach who left an indelible mark on his players, the sport, and the community.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:26):
All right, everybody, welcome to another episode of the Encaio Podcast.
Got a special guest for you. We're going down the
hometown series again. We got coach, well, we can still
call you coach, Coach Chris Fryar. Thanks for coming in, man,
thanks for hanging out with us.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Appreciate them and joining.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
So, Coach Friar, as most of you know, was this
legend at Mount Juliet High School. And I didn't realize
that you had retired as early as twenty twenty, so
I hadn't been that long. But what a lot of
you don't know is that I had a pretty strong
backstory with the two thousand and five, two thousand and four,
two thousand and five Them's basketball team all the way

(01:01):
up through the state championship. So I wanted to bring
Coach Fryar in talk about his life, his philosophies, kind
of how he got into girls basketball from football, which
I think is probably his true love back in the day.
So we'll kind of go through that. But and then
you know, there's no there's no Lady Lady Bears in
here to argue any of our points today, So we

(01:21):
just kind of take it where we want to go.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
That sounds great.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So you are a Mount Juliet guy. You grew up
in Mount Juliet. I remember you telling a few stories
back in the FCA days. What was it like growing
up in Mount Juliet back then? Because there was nothing going.
There's not a whole lot back then.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
No, No, there wasn't mand it was. There wasn't a
lot of population back in that day in Mount Juliet.
Most of the people lived in Old Hickory or or
even toward Hermitage or maybe out toward one O nine
and that are Glabel. A lot of the kids lived
in that area, but just the downtown area of Magic
was very sparse and not many people the population. That

(01:56):
would start about the population being low in Magic because
people really didn't live around the school area. They were
coming in from, most of them Old hit Created and
the Lakeview area. Because a lot of people in the
seventies didn't want to be busted in Nashville two different
areas to go to Metro school. So there was a
migration that occurred in the late seventies and early eighties

(02:16):
of everybody leaving Davidson County and moving out to Wilson
County and then you.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Saw a lot of that.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
You saw show up in the football program in the
late seventies and early eighties, the powerhouse that, mind you,
it was back then, and girls basketball went and stayed
in seventy seven eighty three. A lot of those kids
had come from Nashville to Wilson County to avoid busting.
Either did that or you paid for private school.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, which is crazy.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
I remember when we my dad got transferred down here
from Bowling Green and we lived in the Lakeview area
and it was close enough, but it was so far away.
But you're right, there was no downtown Mount Julia. There
was back when, back even in the early nineties, there
was a dairy queen and a Burger king, no grocery store,
no movie, thether no Providence, and the Providence felt like

(03:03):
miles and miles and miles away, you know.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Oh yeah, it's just a little two lane road that
went over the Interstate. I remember playing football for Coach
Flat and our bus had broke down and we got
off the bus and pushed it across the Interstate on.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
The ramp there.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Would you imagine that today with Providence to.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Be ridiculous, ridiculous? So growing up then, it was a
little bit different, but there was what year did you graduate?

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Eighty six?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Eighty six? So were you involved in any playing football,
any sports where you were? I was.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I was playing most sports, and in fact, my senior
year I was go to most athletic and I had
a few guys said, how'd you get most athletic? You
only played football? Well, I had played sports up to that,
but you know how sometimes you get single down to
the sports you're playing. And my senior year, I said,
I can play anything. So I went out for the
tennis team and made the tennis team. I was like
the fifth sitid. I wasn't very good at anybody. We

(03:55):
had a little success playing just my senior year playing tennis.
I was involved in all the sports and enjoyed it.
I enjoyed my coaches, enjoyed the team. I always enjoyed
being on the team and being a part of a team.
It was exciting to me just to the locker room
atmosphere and being around other athletes and having coaches was
a lot of fun for me in the eighties. I
really enjoyed it, and some of those guys just I'm sure,

(04:17):
just like you've told me beforehand, those are some of
my best friends today. I still hang around a lot
of guys. I'm retired now and a lot of us,
some of us went into the same fields and some
of us did different things, but we're still buddies, and
more so than even the people I went to college with.
And so in college I was working hard and trying
to finish and I didn't have time for playing around.

(04:38):
But in high school, you know, we played around, had
a good time.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Absolutely, No, those it's crazy. We still have fantasy football
leagues with, you know, twelve guys we went to high
school with. It's all still connected. But it all started
in these weight rooms and winter practices and all this
other crazy stuff that you go through with you and
you used to have time to be around people.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, So branching in going into colle you go to MTSU.
What went into making that decision going down there? Was
it just a thing to do or was there some
intent there?

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Uh? Well, I started off and I was playing football.
That was my sport, and I had some success doing that,
but I really was messing up in high school. I
wasn't really focused as far as school work went and
all that, and the NCAA came up with a new
deal in eighty six from my group and that was
called Proposition forty eight, so I was not eligible my
first year to play football. Tennessee had recruited me. I

(05:30):
was a seventh rated player going into the preseason and
then they wanted to be go to tm I, which
a lot of players back then went to Tennessee Military
Institution and then they would get to go to Tennessee
once they got their grades right to go to Tennessee. Well,
I think I applied it. I didn't go. I didn't
want to do that, and first they didn't have the
money because that was gonna cost money too, So I
ended up going to MTSH. I talked to Boots Donalley

(05:53):
and got going over there, and I got starved with
Doc Crease was the weaight and strength coach at that time.
He came from Vannerabilt timt Isssue, and it was a
school I could go to that was close enough that
if anything happened, I could get home, I could work
in Nashville, I could pay for my school. And that's
basically what happened when I went to college. I just
made a decision after my first year and a half

(06:13):
that I wasn't going to put my focus on athletics
and being a football player anymore. I was going to
just go to school and try to finish. So I
paid for my way. Most of the money that I
had to work in the summers, I paid for school,
and that's how I ended up graduating and getting a
degree in education. My dad was one that kind of
recommended that I didn't know what I wanted, I start

(06:34):
off with a business major, and he said, you've always
enjoyed sports and all that want you look into being
a coach. And that was good advice because I did.
I enjoyed a coaching in the atmosphere of being around
to the coaches too, which is like I did when
I was playing.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
So similar. We kind of talked about this before. The
same deal thought I was something you go to college
and then you're like, well, somebody's got to pay for this,
and if your parents aren't doing how the means gonna
be saddled with debtor, you're gonna figure it out. So
I remember, and we'll talk about this too, because I
want to know what you what your summer jobs were.
I worked in the lumber yard, every summer from when

(07:09):
I from the time I was a senior finished senior year,
all the way up to the summer before I graduated.
I graduated early just people were like, Oh, you must
have been blah blah blah blah blah, and I said, no,
I didn't want to go back to the lumber yard
one more time. And every time I go back, I
get reminded and they would remind me, you cannot, you
got to finish. And so because I just didn't want to,

(07:31):
I wasn't motivated yet. You know, I wasn't motivated until
I actually found out that my career could be something.
But what what job did you have in or was
there multiple if you know that kind of kept you
going and could pay. I worked several different jobs.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
When they were building Hickory Hollow Mall, we laid a
lot of the concrete up there, so I was doing
fence and the fencing part of the concrete work. Not
edn't much like that. My uncle started dat he was
going to Bailmont. I had an uncle, Dad started a
long care landscaping bus and I came here and I
worked in this area right where we're sitting today. And

(08:05):
those were valuable days for me. He was older going
to school at Belmont, and he was a good mentor
for me at a young age, and it gave me
some focus and some determination on what I wanted to
do and become. And I didn't have an easy time
in college. There was a intermediate algebra class I couldn't
pass and I failed it twice and I was academically

(08:25):
going to be in trouble there. So determination and teaching myself.
I ended up making a in that course, breezed through
the rest of the courses and was able to graduate,
but a lot of that I could have easily quit.
And I think that determination is what I tried to
put in our basketball team. I wanted them to be
determined to be successful, and I was determined. If they

(08:46):
saw how determined I was, I thought it rubbed off
on them, and they saw I was working that they
wanted to do the same thing.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
So where do you think that came from?

Speaker 2 (08:54):
Part of it was the struggles I had getting through
school because I didn't know where I was. I was
the type that if I went to work at a job,
I was always going to do the hard. I was
a big guy back you know, two thirty, I was
gonna have to do all the lifting, and I said,
I don't know if I want to do all this
kind of work my whole life. I want to find something,
you know. I really didn't want to work. A lot
of my friends may have went to consolidated freight or

(09:17):
ups and that was a lot of labor and a
lot of work. And I always kind of thought, well,
later on in life, I don't know if I want
to be doing that kind of work. So I was
extremely determined to get through school. I think my upbringing,
coming up with my folks and how determined they were
and how hard they worked, helped me. We started off
my parents are pretty young when I was born, so

(09:40):
we lived on my grandparents farm, which is in Cheatham County,
and everybody in Cheatham County there's no paved roads. Every
when I was in it, it was a hardcore, hard
work and you can get beat up pretty quick. That's
that if you're going to be tough or not. But
I remember having cousins and uncles and we'd get in
fights all the time, and I used to tell the
girls stories about at all times and you're just getting

(10:02):
you know, you had to fight for everything, And I
think all that really developed some determination in me to
be successful what I was.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
Going to be doing, and that makes that makes a
lot of sense. So as you as you've gotten through that,
all the determination and things things of that nature with
the jobs and lay in concrete like I've found as
I've done these, there's always these things that almost break
you school, whatever, and then it just it builds in
and it's but did you know when all that stuff

(10:33):
Well you probably didn't, but did you know that that
was gonna I guess from my own perspective, there was
a time, and it was when I couldn't pass the
CPI dam I said, if I pass this, there's nothing
ever that's gonna be able to stop me. Ever, again,
was there something that happened with you to where you're like,
pretty much, whatever I do is going to be successful
as long as I give it what I'm giving.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
All this stuff, I would point back to the class
I was taking that m tissue that I couldn't pass
the intermediate Algebra. And the reason I couldn't pass that
class is because when we were down at Magic Junior High,
we were not we were cheating basically in seventh and
eighth grade on algebra, and that cost me when I

(11:16):
went to college, and that because I didn't learn the
foundations in I couldn't pass it in college. But so
I taught basically taught myself, and I was like you,
I said, this is gonna make or break me. And
after I finished doing that, I made an A in
that course. The college math courses I had to take
there were easy. All the rest of it was pretty easy.
In fact, I worked at the university for one of

(11:38):
the professors, and I graded a lot of the tests
that other people were taking in a lot of the
classes I was taking. I was a history teacher, but
I was also wellness and physical education, so I was
in that department and I enjoyed it. But I was
working hard at the same time I was going. I
was leaving school, coming to Nashville cutting yards, doing landscape work,

(12:00):
driving to MTSU the next and then I worked some
at Nissan. I was doing security at nissign out there,
driving in the parking lot, then going to school. But
the best part was when I graduated in Walket across stage.
I had no debt. I was not paying anybody back,
and I've kind of my kids Jordan and Cameron both
went to one went to ut and one went to

(12:20):
Chattanooga and they did the same thing. They worked and
we got them started, and they worked while they were
in school and they both lived with no debt too
so crazy. It's it's not easy to do, but if
you're determined and you know what you want, it can
be done.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah. I didn't know it at the time because, same
as you, I wasn't as big as you, but I
was probably two hundred pounds, was benched a lot of it.
I was a big dude when I came out of
college or went into college because I wasn't playing baseball anymore.
And you get stuck pulling trim at Alumbia because you
can handle the big sixteen foot long bundles of trim,
and I could tell my body was breaking down, and
I'm like, I got to use my brain. And then

(12:58):
it dawned on me that everybody around me had all
this debt, all these credit cards and all this stuff,
and hear and watching my dad work one hundred hours
a week, drive a truck and barely make it ends meet,
and I'm like, yeah, that's not going to be me now.
Little did I know that paying my school debt off
was going to catapult everything else I did in my
life to stay low profile. I have no debt all
that stuff. Did you have any idea that when you

(13:22):
walked across that stage you had no debt? Did you
realize how far ahead you had already gotten yourself?

Speaker 2 (13:27):
And no clue? I thought that was just the way
you had to say.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
I just always wondered how other people think about that.
They're like, did you know how? And I was like, no,
I was surviving. Yeah, that's all I thought I was doing.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah. I didn't realize how big of them a jump
that was. But a lot of people they I saw
people in college that were there for a long time
and they weren't working or doing anything. So I know
eventually they had to pay all that back. I don't
know how they did it, but I was just worried
about me at the time. But that that affected in
some ways. That affected some my relationships in college because

(14:02):
I was not able to party and hang out at
the frat houses and do that stuff That was not
on my list of things to do. So my relationships
were much more connected to Mount Juli and the people
I went to high school with and that's probably what
got me back to that school to teach and coach,
was the relationships I Hadn't.

Speaker 1 (14:19):
That makes sense, I mean, that's what I'm with the
principal now, Ryan Hill, you know that's right. Guy came
right back, right back from where it came from. So
you get you get done with MTSU and you're you're
doing student teaching at Levinon, right, That's correct. So then
you get your first opportunity to coach. So what was
that like? Let's walk through that. It was incredible.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
I really enjoyed it. But what I did there's a
story kind of behind that. Levenon at the time in
football owned Mount Juli, which was very rare because Mindud
had always when I played, we had always beat Levenon.
We didn't have any trouble with Levenon. But Mark Medley
was the coach there and he had really brought a
new attitude to Levenon football. And I knew that if

(15:02):
I wanted to coach football, I need to be around
the best coach I could be. So I went to
him and he was in the Waterman's one the summer
before I was going to stay teach, and I said
coach MANA, I'd like to stud teach for you. I
like to coach them and come here and help you guys.
And he's lee gonna let me think about this for
a minute. And because he thought saw me as a
trojan horse, he thought I was coming to take my

(15:23):
knowledge what they were doing back to my Juliet, which
eventually it kind of worked that way, but I wasn't
doing that at the time. I just knew I was
around really a different person. This guy was different. He
treated kids different, he coached in a different way. The
saddest thing about him was he only coached at Levenon
for about eight years. If he would have had a

(15:44):
thirty year career, he would be spoken about like the
Carlton Flats and the other people that have amazing careers
because he was just an incredible guy and had a
great coaching staff. Everybody on the staff was really nice
to me, great to me. They treated me just like
I was an assistant coach. I got the gear and
the shorts in the shirt, and in fact, when you're
that age, you're twenty two years old, that's exciting to

(16:05):
say I'm doing what I wanted, what I dreamed about.
Doing now I'm doing it. So I learned a lot
of things from him about coaching and how much funny
could be. That may have been the best experience I
had coaching football. And I'd always thought I was gonna
come back to my Julian be ahead football coach. That
was my goal. And I had an opportunity in my

(16:26):
twenties where I was a candidate for the job, but
I didn't get it, and little didn't I know that
was a blessing really at the time.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Okay, well, so we get into we'll come back to
the blessing. Well, whenever the blessing comes up in the timeline.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
You let me know.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
So you're so you knew you wanted to coach as
soon as soon as you went into the educational field.
Did you enjoy teaching classes though? That's what I always
wanted to know. I always ask Purpose, do you really
like teaching geography? You know? Do you you do you
like that?

Speaker 2 (16:56):
You know a few years me and coach Purpose were
beside each other the same classroom. I remember, you know,
when I went when I taught history for ten or
fifteen years, and I really was not a great history
and I love teaching us history, and I love the
stories in history, and what I really liked about it.
I was able to do it kind of my way

(17:17):
and kind of the way I wanted to do it.
But then they started changing that. Education's changed now now
they've got a pacing guide. You've got to go a
certain direction. They tell you they send you to college
to learn how to teach, but then when you come
back to being a teacher, it's like they don't trust
you to do the teaching anymore. So I really enjoyed
when I was in charge and I could teach the class.

(17:41):
Now they made me teach a few classes. I didn't
like current issues. I taught in economics I taught, and
I really enjoyed the US history though, and I think
I would enjoy Tennessee history. There's other things. So I did,
And when I went to the gym, they've eventually said,
you know, we've got a gym opening, would you like it?
And you're thinking, and that gives me more time to

(18:01):
dedicate to coaching. I don't have to grade as many papers.
So you're kind of thinking it's a promotion to get
to do something like that, and a lot of people
want that job. But I didn't. I didn't enjoy that
as much as I did have my own classroom. Having
your own classroom is almost like having your own team,
you know, the first period get you build a relationship.
In the gym, it's just so chaotic. There's so many people,

(18:23):
and you really don't I didn't really feel like I
was teaching with a purpose as much in the gym
as I did in the classroom. I did enjoy I
did enjoy the classroom, and I missed it more when
I left than I thought I would, because at the time,
I was like, Yeah, this would be great. Have a
gravy train here and go to the gym, sit around
with four other coaches and talk sports and enjoy that.

(18:45):
And and it was all right. I enjoyed the people
I worked with, but it wasn't as much fun as
having my own class.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, and I remember talking to I had coach Sims
for US history. By then, I think you were teaching
sociology and something else. But he was like man standing
at the podium like he just loved it, loved it,
like loved everything about it. I remember somebody asking me
one Brittany, my wife asked me, she goes, what would
you do if you could do anything and money money

(19:13):
was no, I said, I teach history, just fun, walk
back through it, interpret it, teach the teach young people
about what happened and all that stuff. No, that's that's cool.
The what what? How did you get pulled into girls basketball?

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Speaking of coach Sims, that would be one of the
main things.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
What happened?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
Mind you le had before you guys got there, and
you saw the how popular a girl's basketball, which would
seem rare you would think, why is this sport popular
at the school? But it was probably one of the
most popular sports at the school and had the most success.
It was the same way back in the early eighties.
They the girls basketball was traveling to the state tournament

(19:54):
and we were all following them and unless the boys hearts.
I was on the team my sophomore year, but they
were mixed in with the Nashville schools, and back in
that day, East High School was hard to be for
aunt gut and you know those kinds of for the
but for the girls, it wasn't. They can handle those
teams pretty good. So I kind of got in high
school following the girls teams just like you guys did,

(20:17):
and I got and coach. I liked Coach Martin. He
was my gym teacher. I thought he was real cool,
so we hung out with him. And then Coach Sims
was helping out. He was coaching the freshman but he's
also helping the high school. So I had had a
relationship to relationship with those guys. When I was young,
I worked in the gym. You know, you have those
little things where you have jobs in the school. One
of my jobs was you'll come to the gym and

(20:38):
you'll organize this kind of enjoyed. So I got to
know coach Simms so and he was coaching football too
at the time when he came back to education. So
I thought I was going to be coaching football. But
when you're young too, you also need money, so you're working.
You'll do anything you may.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Coach.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
The coach Ryan Hill coach the girls soccer. Yeah, so
remember watching YouTube video with him trying to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Yeah, I would ask.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I said, Ryan, you know anything about girls?

Speaker 1 (21:04):
And I was mel Brown stipulation, you want a job here, girl,
that's right.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
So coaching multiple sports was not unusual.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Really. The kicker for me was.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
I was coaching football and I was. We were down
at the Junior High with Butterball and Claire Sutter and
those guys all down there, and I enjoyed coaching. We
had a lot of success down there. Rob Gaines was
one of the coaches, and Bob Dillard took the head
job at Lebanon High School. He was the youngest hog
high school coach at the time, hired as a head coach. Well,

(21:35):
Bob called me and I said, do you want to
come to Lebane High School? And I said, sure, I'll coming.
We had conversation and I wanted to get to the
high school and the junior high kids were a little squeally,
so I wanted to move up to an older group
of kids, and I went over to Lemon and coached
the coach of them for one year. Ryan Olds was on.
I was a defensive line coach. Ryan Olds was one

(21:56):
of my defensive linemen. He went on to Vanderbilt and
he's he's been voted in one of the top one
hundred players at Vanderbilt, and he was a defensive lineman
for me. So I enjoyed coaching those guys. But the
whole time I was over there, I had quit coaching
the freshman girls basketball team. And when I was over
there coaching football, I just had a desire to get

(22:17):
back to coaching the girls. I didn't think I would
miss it, but I did. And I had coached a
couple of years of the freshman team because I was
forced to. But coaching those kids, I loved coaching. I
had Anna Sharp one was on my team. She was
a terrific player. My first year we had really a
lot of success. And Coach Purvis, I think my second

(22:38):
year he was coaching the freshman boys. That's how that developed.
We started playing the boys against the girls. When I
picked the high school job, Coach Purvis already had developed RELATIONSHSIP.
A lot of those guys that were playing baseball, they
played freshmen basketball and then quit and then they would
go to the high school and just played baseball. Well,
I'd say, Coach Purvis's fall, let's get those guys out
of here and let's play the girls in the fall.

(23:00):
But something about that year I went to Levenon High School.
I never could a lot of people talk about blue
devil pride. That never was in me. I was a
magiate bear and I just.

Speaker 1 (23:11):
Didn't much get get right.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
So I wanted to get out of there. By January,
I was getting out of there and I was coming
back coaching girls basketball. Coach Martin and coach Simms had said, hey,
we got this freshman job you going for and coach freshman,
and I said, sure, I want to come back over
So only I only left girls basketball one year and
I really wanted to come back. So when you ask
what got you into girls basketball, I think I fell

(23:33):
in love with it that after those first two years
coaching freshman, I realized maybe this is what I was
supposed to be doing.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
Yeah, And so then how long were you at How
long were you an assistant coach for coach Martin stepped down?

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Not very long went our team. I think I coached
four years of the freshman and we had a lot
of success. I took the kids to camp with the
high school team, and we played a lot of high
schools with our freshman kids, and I remember I had
Amy Biddle and that group was planning and we went
undefeated that year, and I think coach Purvis went he

(24:08):
was coaching the freshman. The next year we had another
good team and Coach Martin decided to retire after twenty
years and of course I thought coach Sims would want
the job. I really didn't at the time want to
be the high school head coach. I was happy coaching
the freshman team. If you remember back during that time too,

(24:29):
freshman ball it isn't like it is today. It's not
played in the afternoon. We were playing those games on
Monday and Thursday and they were primetime six thirty guys
at night, and they were just as much stress in
those games as there was high school. It was packed
and people came to the games, especially when we were
at Maja Junior Ye. When I first started that gym
down there was packed, so it was a lot of excitement.

(24:49):
I really enjoyed that and being in charge. I realized
one thing about coaching basketball. You don't need as much
help as you do in football. When you're coaching football,
you've got to have defensive coordinators, offensive coordinators, secondary coaches,
offensive line coaches. Basketball you can do a lot of
that stuff on your own. And I enjoyed being, you know,
the person making a lot of the decisions on what

(25:10):
we were doing.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
So coach Sims says, no, I'm not going to do it.
What was what was that dynamic.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
I didn't like it at all. I said, well, for
one reason, I wanted to coach football still. I was
still coaching football and I was a defensive coordinator at
that time. I was actually running the defense and we
had hit a you know, Coach Elright had come and
Greg Mantooth was the head coach and we had ran
through some success there. We had beat Riverdale and Gary
Rankins team. We owned Oakland during that time. We had

(25:39):
a tough league. We were planning, but we were one
of the better teams in the in the league. And
coach Winfrey was taken over. I was helping him out.
He had just taken over in two thousand and two
thousand and one. This is before the school split, so
maybe in ninety nine, but you know, they still coach Sims.
I really want to coach football still. You need to
take that head job and all keep doing the freshman

(26:00):
I'm happy doing what I'm doing. I don't have to
move up to that position. And I don't know what
he in his mind. He just said I'm not gonna
do it, but you need to do it. And when
I took that job, it didn't take long for my
wife to say, you're gonna have to make a decision here.
You can't coach both of these sports. You're already gone
all the time for football, and now you're addicted to basketball.
You're gone every day, you are practicing Saturdays and every day.

(26:24):
It is you can't do both. So I ended up,
I think coaching with coach Chuck Groober coaching the freshman
team one year, and that ended my football coaching until
twenty ten when my son played. I helped Roger Perry
coach one year when Cameron was a sophomore. But that
was into my football coaching, which I never thought that

(26:44):
went in and a lot of people, a lot of coaches,
and coach Medley has said this to people before, he said,
I was a football coach that was coaching girls basketball basically,
So I guess I took a lot of those philosophies
with me to coaching basketball girls basketball.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
That's that's kind of way we we came in because
we knew you were a football guy. And then my
freshman years when the school split, So what was that
like as a coach when that when Wilson Central and
Mount Juliet came and it was like, I just remember
if we had for baseball baseball only if we there

(27:20):
was like in that. In those that four year group
of Wilson Central and Mount Juliet, it's probably three or
four guys that played Division one MLB, and I couldn't
imagine if we were all together still, So what was
that like from your perspective when the school did split,
Because I remember that rock the city.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
It was, it was pretty bad. Now we going into
the split. Beforehand, I had had Jennifer Johnson who was
a miss basketball finals, Cortney McFarlane who was a missed
basketball finance, Danina Lockerchie signed with t Issue, Kisha Tunstall.
All those kids were playing during that time, and then
the split happened and my entire freshman class was all

(27:59):
zone for Wilson Central. So yeah, I was young and
I didn't I probably didn't make the best decisions back then,
but I told those girls that were going to Wilson Central,
I said, look, I don't know how to handle this,
but our season was over us, So y'all got to
go to the other locker room because they were actually
starting practicing for Central, our enemy. So y'all got to

(28:19):
go over there. And I had a few parents, so
you can't do that. You can't take the kids and
make them move over. The other locker might say, well,
I took the one girl that I had. One girl's
Christy Welch was one girl I had some for Mount Julie,
and I said, Christy, you got to go over there
with them. All of you got to go because they
said you're letting one girl stay in the lower sending
everybody else over.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
So that's how confusing it was.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
It was just that Spring was so confusing, dealing with
the situation in Central being built. And then if you
get I didn't really think about the talent level at
the time, but if you think about putting Tierney Jenkins
with Alisia Clark, it wouldn't have been fair really, so
and Kelly Gassy those kids, it wouldn't have been fair

(29:01):
really because we would have dominated. It was crazy that
we had two of the best programs from two thousand
and twenty ten. All of it would have been mind juts.
It wouldn't have been a Wilson Central.

Speaker 1 (29:11):
It wouldn't have been a Mount Juliet state championship in
a Central state championship.

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Multiple yeah, yeah, multiple yeah. And so that was really
hard some when I look back on a lot of
that was a bitter peal to swallow really to think about.
But I'm glad we made it through that, and we
did in our programs. Baseball got its traction and we
basketball did it. Football eventually got going with some changes

(29:36):
they made there. So you know, I don't know how
we recovered from it on I think right now they're
struggling more to recover from it. Green Hill was more
of a.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Struggle more because it's right in your backyard. Yeah, those
schools are but two miles apart from each other. I
couldn't even imagine.

Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yeah, you know, that's one of the reason why I retired,
because the lake View was such a good feeder for us.
And when they built a new high school right in
front of Lakeview, I said, and those kids are the
ones we lived off over here. So I can't see
coaching just the kids that live around Minded high school.
These are people who are transit that just come in.
They're not established from a young age to no one.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
So, yeah, it's a weird zoning zone where the new
Mandulut High School is versus Because yes, we all my
I grew up went to Lakeview. We in Hickory Hills
and Willoughby Station and it was just all these athletes
came out of there.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
I can name about twenty, you know, the twenty two
years I coached, I can name twenty studs. And they
played basketball for me that came from school.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I remember just playing in the WWBA rec leagues and
some of those kids, and you're just like and then
I remember being in middle school because we knew we
were going to be splitting and those teams were crazy good.
And then the freshman year, because there was no longer
an NX, we all moved into the big high school together,
so the freshmen weren't off by themselves because they turned

(30:56):
that into a middle school. And just remember all the
relationships we had to deal with. And now our friends
are now our enemies and we're playing summer ball with
these people. And it was a weird, weird time that
I don't think anybody knew how to handle.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Yeah, the you know, when Central was built, it was
more like the Glade Blade Boy. We lost and we
had a lot of.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
Friends in that area.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
We hated losing them, and we lost a lot of
good teachers that went over to Wilson Central. This one
seems a little more personal to me.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
No, it is because we cut into eleven. Well was
the Central cut into eleven in which we didn't care
about Yeah yeah, but this one. Yes. So I've had
my buddy Jonathan Drake, He's like, I gotta get I
gotta stop, Like, you can't build anything when they keeps splitting.
Who knows how long it'll take to recover. But I
remember one of those things that helped everybody kind of

(31:46):
get back on track was girls basketball. You guys were
the first team to be successful. The football team could win,
but a game against Wilson Central. I remember that my
freshman year. They won that first game nineteen to seventeen
or something. Everybody rushed the field. Then didn't win a
game for basically until my junior year. They started winning
a little bit. They switched up the districts, and then

(32:09):
Levi came back and played and then he got hurt.
But it was like girls basketball was it, and then
baseball was on the rise. So when you when you
were going through all that, you knew you you knew
you were already building something. You had this split. What
was going through your head as far as like was
the state championship or bust at that time yet or
was it? Are we still just building a program?

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah? I think what we made some early decisions that
really paid off for us. One was I made a
change in our junior high coaching. I heard Rick Johnson
to coach our junior high kids, and he started doing
things that we were doing. And those kids came up
and they knew us. We had had them at Little
Kids Camp, which that was another thing that we did.
We didn't have Kids Camp really modulated until I took

(32:54):
that job, and I said, we need to give reach
our younger kids and get to know those kids somehow.
So I think that decision was a big deal. When
those girls came up in two thousand and three Christian
Gibson and Casey Pigg Paige McFarland ceremonies, they were ready
to play high school basketball because they had Rick could

(33:14):
run our stuff, and he had prepared them and he
mentally made them tougher, and they were ready to play.
We just needed We knew that the ability was even
going to be maybe better than it had been as
first skills because he had had time to develop those girls.
So they were coming to us knowing how to dribble
and pass at the same time, where the kids when

(33:34):
I first started coaching, they would dribble, stop, put it
over the head, and then make a pass. You know,
it's a different skill level, and so we knew it,
but we needed a bell cow and that's when a
Luici Clark came in November of right before Thanksgiving, I'd
say this was probably right before we played in jamboree games.
She came and we put her on the bench and

(33:55):
she had a long way to go, but she was
going to be with a very skilled group. So we
weren't going to be bad that year. We were going
to win some games, but we weren't going to be
on the level of competing at the state until she
showed up. And then that that was probably my favorite
year of coaching because we ended up going to the
state tournament and she was a sophomore and we were

(34:17):
starting three freshmen and two sophomorees Holly Hudson and her
and then and Lauren was a senior on the team.
And you know that Lauren was a great leader for us.
She really helped that that state championship team. I give
a lot of credit to Lauren because the way. She
hadn't been a senior and not she wasn't a starter.
She would come off the bench and her little sister

(34:38):
was starting. You know, that's going to be tough for
a kid at that age. And she put a lot
of effort, a lot of work in that, and you know,
we just we had developed, we had had kids. I
think that decision was a big decision to get Rick
to coach a junior high team. And then Anna Sharp
was coaching my fresh she was getting involved, so she

(34:59):
was really involved one of them. So the people that
were helping us out, getting Mark Purvis to be on
our sun, I've always thought I had really good coaches.
Chuck Gruver and the role that he was done. It
was real big for me that everybody contributed in some
way where they had a role on the team. You know,
it may be that not everybody can score, not everybody

(35:20):
can be the best rebounder, but passing is your deal,
or if you're helping us in practice, about your deal.
I always just try to treat everybody kind of equal
in that area. The only area you can't treat people
equal in is playing time, and that's what gets people mad.
That's why they don't get to play, there's always going
to be hurt feelings and a lot of times. I know,

(35:41):
for me, it took me till I was thirty to
realize the why I probably shouldn't have been playing. I
probably wasn't one of the best. Flu you're pretty mad
for a long time. I mean, I know some people
would get very emotional about playing time that I played
ball with and they you disliked their coach because of that,
and you know, and when it comes down to it,

(36:03):
it's basically the biggest dislike was they weren't really getting
to play. If you fix that one problem, they probably
didn't think the coach was that bad.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
It's very interesting how that works now, and it's a
lot of it's perpetuated by parents. I remember having the
same struggle, not playing a lot, but working my butt off,
but it wasn't until I got into my career. There's
you know, this kind of side guru for saving back
in the day, name doctor Kevin Elko, and he would
always say, the game knows and if you can understand

(36:31):
that meaning, which is basically, the game is the game.
If you're on the bench and you're dealing with the
struggle that's helping you if you're in it and you're
you're in the struggle in that way, it's helping you.
Like it's all building towards you being a decent human being. Now,
when you're in high school and college and you're feel
like you're getting skiffed for somebody who drinks on the weekends,

(36:52):
it shouldn't done deserve to be out there. Yeah, you're pissed,
but I think to your point, you have to be
able to figure out how to how to work through that.
And so one of the things I wanted to touch
on was kind of the origins of your coaching philosophy. Now,
you came from football, so you have a football minded
background in coaching, and then some would say you bring

(37:14):
that with you over there because you were a no
nonsense guy. You those girls practiced very hard. Where did
that is? That? Is? That is it? It is easy to
say it was just a transition of the mentality or
where did that develop? Because you were doing something different.
And it's cool because I have a different perspective of
what I was watching because I got to be in
there and playing against them. But where did that philosophy

(37:36):
come from? Of how you you trained them and one
aside to make sure I hit on Coach Johnson. My
wife talks about Coas Johnson all the time. He was
the keeper. Yeah, if you figured it's like you figured
out how to dribble, pass, shoot, score, run, press, all
the fundamentals in middle school. So then what they always

(37:58):
said is, I think Brittany would tell me, I like,
freshman year was like a gap year because it was
easy and then you knew you were going to see
Fry or your sophomore year, you know what I mean,
Like it was got you get one year, so you
had Coach Johnson really hard, tough, kind of easier with
the freshman year, let's have fun and then it we're
back to being serious again. For whatever reason, that combination

(38:18):
of that kind of freshman easier, you're up into that.
But it kind of worked. It worked, and you guys
might not have planned it like that, but yeah, you
putting him there. It was huge because girls were staying,
girls weren't moving, and then there were a lot of uh,
I don't know, you you may know about this. There's
a lot of movement with people inside of schools back then,

(38:39):
where people's parents would get jobs within the school whether
it's a cafeteria lady or this or that, so they
could move schools. Yeah, a lot of that was going on.
Leavy Brown did that. Yeah, they rented a house right
on the other side of the line, so you come
back to Mount Juliett and so you had to deal
with that. But when that factory started, people started, if
anything moving and you know, moving over to our side,

(39:00):
and it was like, okay, but back to the philosophy,
where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Beau? I want to get off. You know, when I
started and when I started coaching football, I was coaching
defensive ends and I was really addictive to little bitty things.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
I thought little things mattered.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I had Nickmattingly played for me. David Deman was
a linebacker that played for me in junior high. And
I developed certain things we did at practice and skills
we ripped and worked on. But I was real nonsense,
no nonsense, and very serious about what we were doing.
And I thought our kids got really good at what
we were doing. And with the guys and being an assistant,

(39:33):
they really appreciated that. Coaching girls, I really built a
deal with them where it was kind of them against me,
and I thought the way I justified or I would
tell them. I said, girls, you as long as y'all
care about each other, it doesn't really matter how you
feel about me. I mean it does personally. I don't

(39:55):
like to be hated, but it's not going to affect
us winning our bensics successful. How you feel about me,
but it will what do you feel about each other?
This is just my philosophy of coaching girls. I thought
it was different and not having drama in the locker room.
It comes from how hard are they working to go
when they're in the locker room, when they're in the

(40:15):
locker room and they're saying, man, he's killing us. And
it's something about suffering together and being mentally tough, knowing
you're being pushed. A lot of those early teams back
during that time, they had the personality where they wanted
to be challenged to They kind of liked being challenged.
And when I look back, what kind of started all
that for me? Coach Martin's last few years, I thought

(40:38):
they had a lot of talent. I was just on
the outside looking in. They had talent and they would win,
they had success, but when they played a team like Chobbyville,
or Coffee County. They would just get mauled, and it
was all about toughness and how hard knows they were.
Those other teams were just meaner, and I don't know
if they were just country or they were they were

(41:00):
doing to buy up chopping, what the deal was, but
something made them tougher. And when I took that job,
said we are not gonna get bullied. And I remember
the first camp I went to with my high school team,
the team I was coaching. Crystal Upton was on my
team and we were playing Abby Ramsey. He went to
Vanderbilt and she they got a scuffle on the floor

(41:21):
and Abby Ramsey kicked her while she's on the floor,
and I said, Crystal, don't let her kick you kick
her back, and that was my fuck. We weren't gonna
get kicked anymore. Them days were over, and mind you,
we're not gonna shy away from you. You're gonna hold us.
We're gonna hold you.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
And we'd go.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
Into big games and I knew somebody liked Shovel coaching
the way he coached. It didn't take a lot. I
studied film like I did when I was coaching football.
Every you know, I broke down the fem It take
me hours to figure out what if somebody was doing.
And then we would take it and would go into
a game and I would say, I remember telling Alicia
and Kristin all them, I said, listen the first quarter again, shovel,

(41:58):
they're right number one in the nation. I'm coming into
urge him. I said, it's gonna be a fistfight. Don't
even try to play basketball. Just don't let them intimidate you.
And if the score is seven to six after the
first quarter, we're gonna win because what they want to
do is intimidate you, push you around, get up twenty
and then coast in the second happen, win the game.
We're not gonna let that happen anymore. But that didn't

(42:20):
come on gay. You can't tell people on game nights
we're gonna be tough. That comes from every day being tough.
That comes practices being tough and not taking a day off.
I guarantee you any of them girls on that team,
they would tell you they hated Wednesday's practice because we
would win on Tuesday, and Wednesday I would kill him.
And then Thursday we would take it easier, and then

(42:41):
Friday we would play again, and then we'd come in
on Saturday and I'll kill you again. So there was
a mentality of he's gonna be hard essed. But those
kids in there, I mean they a lot of them
had the personality where they really wanted to be pushed,
and I was really coaching for the ones who wanted
to win, and I wasn't worried if you weren't on
board with us, then I wouldn't really concerned with your

(43:04):
how you felt about it, or how your parents felt
about it. No one over my twenty two years would
call me and say, you're not playing my kid, I
wanted to play. I mean I would try to get
rid of somebody that did that. Some years in the springtime,
I would just try to people say well he had
this one quit and that one quit, and I said, well,
guess what I wanted them to They were a problem.
They didn't want to work, they thought they were too

(43:25):
much drama. And I didn't want those kind of players.
I wanted people who were determined and were hard working,
and basically for most of my career that's what I had.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
I think that led to.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
A lover or success. I did.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
For sure. We would always joke because we would you know,
we'd be getting ready to play play them, play dude
practice against them, but you'd have them run on those
Wednesdays before and we're like, well, we hope they put
the trash cans out to day because they're out there
throwing out and then they come in they have the playoffs.
Where did that come from? And you kind of mentioned
it earlier, but the guys on baseball team, we'd come

(43:57):
in I started doing that. I think they were doing
it my I remember I'm doing it my sophomore year,
maybe my freshman year, but junior is when I got
asked to come up because we needed somebody. Me and
Ryan had to rotate on Paige McFarlane and Alisha Clark,
which I'm like, how did I get this? I'm five
nine and a half, but I was bigger and broad
enough to have the center of gravity to maybe hold

(44:19):
until Coach Simps taught Alicia Engeles. Then I got really frustrated.
We'll talk about that in a minute, but where did
that start? Because now they do that in the WNBA.
They have these d one guys who couldn't make it.
Alicia was telling us about it. They come in five
guys and they play against the girls and they just
do their best to just beat them up, rough them up.
Where did all that? Where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
You know, later in my career, I never could come
with these good ideas, But back then I thought that
was one of our better ideas. It was awesome because
the guys were so much faster and quicker and so athletic.
Number one with the guys was you had to stop
the ball. Because the baseball guys could bring the ball
fast and could score layups quick, but they really weren't

(45:01):
good shooters. So my whole deal was that if you
stop the ball, make them set up, that gives you
a chance. Well think about how much that helped us
against everybody we played the rest of them the whole season.
No one was able to bring the ball and get
an easy bucket. They're gonna have to work for a
basket because we were pretty set on knowing how to
stop the basketball. Now, I didn't want to overdo it
with the guys. I think I brought you in on

(45:21):
Mondays and we caught it like Monday night basketball. So
after they got you with all their workouts, I can't
even imagine doing this today because it has to be
wore out from their workouts. Then they would play that
night against the guys. And some girls can be good basketball,
really good basketball players, and not play against guys. It's
hard to play against guys even when you're a good player,
and some can kind of adjust to playing against guys.

(45:44):
I had one rule for the guys. I said, y'all
can't block shots. Now, what I meant by that was,
if Alicia's trying to get the ball, you can steal
it all day. You can go around, but it doesn't
help her when she turns around to shoot it. And
if you swat it, then you start making her change
her shot. And I didn't want to ruin her thinking
all that, I want her to keep it simple, her

(46:06):
shot or pages or whoever. And we did this every
year I coached. We did this my first year. I
brought the guys in. But the biggest part of that
was having Mark Purvis on my coaching staff. And Mark
his value was really in the fall because when it
got to be hunting season and November, Mark was gone.
He wasn't going to be around for November, daring Thanksgiving

(46:27):
to see him till February fourteenth, when Valati's day was
the start of six ams. Yeah, but that's another part too.
I was Mark Purvis was a man jug guy. He
went to my June. I was a mindjug guy, John
Simms graduate from JO and a sharp graduate. I would
tell our kids, listen, I know who you are. I

(46:47):
was raised where you were. We had old Hickory Lake.
We had field parties just like y'all do. We had
pursu priest either. We we ran and did the same
stupid stuff y'all did. But when I played, I wasn't
really challenged. I liked my coaches because they were nice
to men. I could joke around with one or two
of them, but I really desired a coach that was

(47:09):
pushing me. And that's when I'm gonna give y'all and
I know what your I know your weaknesses. I know
we're soft. I'm soft, you're soft. We're all soft. We
got to fix that. So that was kind of my
philosophy going into we got to fix this problem. I'm
not as good a coach as Mark Purvis with his
baseball guys. I thought he did a great job of
coaching you guys. And the way you got to coach

(47:30):
baseball guys, but girls needed there needed to be a
change in handling the good teams across the state with
being tough and being hard nosed, and we if we
can match that, we could start competing. And that's kind
of we do that.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
So yeah, and that was one of the things that
were I'm skipping ahead to go back, but there was
just to talk about the guy who's playing the girls.
I remember the year, my junior year, we were playing
and we're like, Okay, they're getting better, like they were
starting to like caused us problems. And then my senior
year there's this infamous situation that the girls all seem

(48:07):
to remember where I just lose my stuff because I'm like,
they finally they're finally beating the crap out of us now,
and I'm tired of this. And every time I turn
around at Leasha's not there anymore, and Page is not
there anymore. I'm like, what's going on? And so I
remember Brian, I was like, we gotta start calling fouls
on them. It didn't work, which didn't work, but I

(48:29):
just remember, you know, walked off and stormed out, and
I remember afterwards, I can't remember who said it. It
was like, they're gonna un stint this year. I was like, well,
what do you mean. They're like, if they're frustrating us
this bad, then they're gonna have no problems. And I
was like, well, I hope so, because I'm sick of this,

(48:50):
because this is like, this is embarrassing, and at the
time it's now I think it's like, no, it's embarrassing.
We were playing basketball anymore. But you just thought this
guy versus girl thing should be. But they just kept
getting better and better and better. So going into that
two thousand and three year, you obviously had Alicia come
in when she was a sophomore. There was a big
run that two th Island three year up until that

(49:11):
faithful night in Mount Juliet when we played Laverne. Now,
I've rehashed this with a million people, and I always
wanted to hear your take on it. You know, at
the time two thousand and three, you guys were jumping
out to some good leads back then and everybody was
still playing, you know, and then you guys get some
get the freshman out there and mop up time, which

(49:33):
is my junior year. That's when I first saw Brittany
and I was like, oh, she's pretty cute, and I
was like getting the freshman some time. But what what
was that situation like for you when your star player
gets hurt and it just seems like, you know, I've
heard it from Alicia's perspective and Britney's perspective, what was

(49:53):
that like for you? Because I mean that was we
didn't know at the time, at least at the beginning
how serious that injury was, yeah, and what it ended
up you know, doing.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
You know, and the memory of that goes probably different
people have different ways to remember how that how that
went down. We at the time we were really a
pressing team that was their junior year and we I
think her junior year we were better actually than we
were the senior we were in the state because we
were a little more versatile in that area. And my

(50:24):
philosophy was always even though I knew we were probably
better than Laverne, though I was nervous with any team
we played. I've never been a coach that went into
a game thought we couldn't lose. We got it. We
would start the third quarter out kind of how we
ran our offense and how we did our defense in
the third quarter, and then the fourth quarter we would
try to sub people out. Alicia. What I remember about

(50:45):
that night was she was we were in the third
quarter and we were pressing, and we were up, but
it was early in the third quarter, and it was
really just trying to keep the same mojo going, not
just for that night, but the next game and the
next time. Kind of the way we did things, we
were going to keep it going, and I remember that,
you know, when she got hurt. What I remember most

(51:09):
about it is coming back. We played White House the
next night or the next game, and Paige McFarlane was sick,
and we had beat white House probably thirty five earlier.
We went in overtime and beat them this next time,
and how scary that they had one really good player.
But I think and a lot of it was some
of those younger kids were now having to remember Mandy

(51:31):
McGee had to start that game, so they had to come.
They were young and not used to that. That environment.
Came back and we played a really good Wilson's Central
team at Mount Juillette and beat them in several overtimes
without Elisha there. So I think we dropped one game,

(51:51):
maybe Smirt or somebody like that. But it was tough
and the thing that saved media and that I think
coach Simms took it hurt than I did, because of
course he was coaching the post and we had we
had to readjust in everything we were doing. And even
though we shared, we were really big on sharing the
ball passing by most of our scores were made by cis,
not by dribbling and scoring. And we could stay with

(52:16):
our same offense. Our two posts were going to be
the main part of our offense is going to be
whoever the four was. My whole career was whoever the
four was, whoever.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
The five was.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Basically, we're working to get them the ball and then
we she'd open three very simple, most good teams that
I know, they no matter what sport it is, they're
not doing complicated things. And we were doing a very
simple thing. But you'd be pretty good at what you
were doing. And everybody kind of knew that. But when
at least show went down, My youngest son, n was
born two days after that happened, I think it happened.

(52:45):
He's one of the fifth of February. It happened probably
the third, so I was very distracted with his birth
and my wife. That was a big deal for us,
and so that kind of helped me get through that area.
But that's one that I looked back on and think
we should have won two state championships. We got robbed
in O four because we were better in four. Then

(53:07):
we're five.

Speaker 1 (53:07):
Now.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
The competition that was we beat Shelvell earlier that year
pretty good. We were winded up having to play them
again in the state finals and the next year when
we wanted Chevy didn't have the same program with Rick's team.
He had lost a lot of players. He wasn't quite
as good, but it would have been exciting. O four
had been excited. But I do believe we had the
best team in the state and that injury is what

(53:29):
held us back. She Alicia was able to come back
before the end of the season. She played against Northeast.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
Northeast had a girl.

Speaker 2 (53:37):
On the team named Evans that was the leading scorer
in the NCAA. With Alicia, she was playing at James Mightison,
so that's how good the competition was. She went on
to college in Wistrem minutes and they had a really
good team, so we weren't playing any slappies out there.
It wasn't like somebody that you could just show up
and beat. And it was in the Region Simmis, which

(53:57):
that's the game that sin John and with her injury,
I don't believe we probably would have won the state
that year. Anyway, by that time, you know, we had
lost some confidence. So man, what a great motivator it
was for the next year. And really those kids were
really focused going into the off season and we challenged them.
We went to big tournaments, went to Greenville's tournament, We

(54:20):
went all over the place in the summer. We went
up to Ut Martin and played in the summer a
lot of the West Tennessee teams that played a little different.
We played Hoover, Alabama, We played a lot of people
that were some of the best teams around at that time.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
So then you guys play Lake Mary too as well
as that.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Yeah, Lake Mary was a number one in with Florida
and ended up beating them. Problem we had in that
game that you don't get good tape on people in
the Christmas time, so my tape wasn't very good, and
the best player on their team somehow, Paige McFarlane got
the gardener and she scored the first two or three
buckets pretty easy, and Alisha on the floor. She made

(54:57):
a switch. She says, I'll take her and you take
this other one. And I didn't contradict you.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
I didn't get involved.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
That's probably a good idea. But they were writing number
one in the state of Florida at that tournament, so
that was a fun time. Those tournaments are really fun
because they'd have sixteen teams, they were all girls, and
it'd be over two thousand people in the stands. They
really care about their youth sports in Green Green County
and Greenfleton, so unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (55:22):
So leading up to twenty two thousand and five, we're
going into my senior year high school and then we
have a new men's basketball coach, Gary Vanada coming in town.
Who is you know, my stepdad, you know, big Walter
Nipper guys done school sports forever knows Banada from his
old days, Gallat and all this other stuff, and it's

(55:43):
coming to coach boys, and we're like, what's he doing.
You ended up going to Trivaca coaching the girls been
kind of was a recruiting train for a while for
MJ which was awesome. They did some great things up there.
But he brings his daughter with them, KC. Not same
spelling as my name, but and we'd be in there
just watching her, just drain threes, just a factory. And

(56:06):
I'm like, okay, so now we got Alicia, we had,
we got Casey Vanatta coming in and then I remember
going into that tiny little weight room that we had
and we'd do those box exercises all together. Yeah, and
I remember when we all started, you could see some
of the girls just struggling, and within a month or so,

(56:26):
everybody was in shape. And then, like I said, back
to my walking out of the gym moment, the girls
were getting better on the floor. They were banded together.
They're spending all their time together. Could hardly take Brittany
on a date because she's always with the girls. You know,
they're hanging out at Holly Hudson Talis because Tommy's making them,
you know, poster or whatever he's doing. Alicia Clark's got
had his role. Like all these parents were involved. It

(56:48):
was like this ecosystem and you knew something special was
gonna happen. You just don't know how. It was. So
like I was telling you before, me and Camleb caught
and Ryan Hill. We're getting one of our trucks every week,
usually Ryan's, and we'd follow We just follow you guys
around on here. We felt like, hey, we've been elbowed, kicked,
scratched by these girls, so we're just going to go

(57:09):
see what happens. Did you know Obviously we knew that
team may not have been as talented as two thousand
and four, But did you know that that team had
a chance, especially after you went to Shelbyville that first game.
We all drove down there and we're like, Okay, now
you probably knew what we didn't know, which is that
they didn't have the same team that before. But the
feeling was, Okay, we're something, we got something here, and

(57:33):
we just got to roll with it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
I knew it was going to be a specially we
were so versatile. We could play fast, we could play slow,
we could play half court, we could play full cord.
We could score inside, we could shoot outside. I had
two girls that made over sixty or seventy threes on
the same team when you had Alisha inside and then

(57:55):
Page set a state tournament record by hitting ten or
twelve consecutive correct goes. So we knew we had versatility.
The only thing that concerned me was going to be
someone pressing us that it was long because we were short.
Christian wasn't the tallest and we needed some hollyod was
going to be her help and she's kind of sure too,

(58:15):
so that was a concern. And in the state finals
there was a little stretch there where we had some
trouble with that, but no one else really caused us
any She said we were able to bring a leasha
up and handle some She wasn't a great ball handler,
but she was a winner, so when she got the ball,
she was able to take care of it and get
us down the floor. That team was just a great
passing team. They shared the ball so well, they moved

(58:37):
the ball so quick defenses couldn't recover, and a lot
of teams were just quitting the Third War. They get
tired of chasing. Yes, they get tired of chasing the ball,
and they knew where each other was going to be.
They were all on the same page. They just thought
like one another. They just were like a machine out
there on the floor. And bringing Vanada into that situation,

(58:58):
I knew about knew Gary van Adam because he's a
Mincha guy too. He was a grad and and he
went and won a state championship over at Gallatin and
then he coached with his wife who his wife was
a Casey's mom was a tremendous player for Tommy Martin
when they won the state in eighty three. Kim Saderfield
and you know, getting case we played Casey's team. I

(59:21):
was really good friends with Kevin McMillan, who was the
head coach at Martin Westview, and I felt bad for
Kevin because Casey was leaving his team and coming to
play for ours. But we played Kevin in the summer
and he had he's the ut Martin's head coach, and
he's been head coach at Martin for maybe twenty years.
But he had this new philosophy where we were going

(59:43):
to press and they were gonna score. You could shoot
any shot, and all his kids could shoot, but everything
was gonna be real fast. He's gonna hit because his
percentages to shooting the ball was going to beat you
being able to shoot a normal runoffense. Sort of like
the Tennessee women playing now with the new coach Caldwell.
You know, it's how their scoring is going out to
one hundred. Well they're taking there's no one under the

(01:00:04):
rim to rebound, they're not setting up an offense, they're
just right into scoring. And that's kind of what he did. Well,
we had a leation. Then we're seniors, and we beat
him that summer like a dog. I mean, first of
his press didn't affect us, and then that crazy shooting
they were doing. We were down the floor shooting laps
before he could get his and he didn't really care
as much about the defensive end. I think that kind

(01:00:25):
of triggered Casey leaving and coming to They were wanting
it really didn't fit her. If you know Casey, she's
not the most agile, the fastest sort of them, you know,
that kind of player. So I think they I've never
talked to Gary about this, but I just can't got
the feeling that he wanted to come back home. He's
ready to make a change, and Casey's situation wasn't maybe

(01:00:48):
working out the way he wanted to. One of his
best friends is Tommy Brian, who's the Wilson post writer,
and that summer we've gone to camp and done all
that stuff, and Tommy Brian calls me on the phone
he say, Chris, you got him. I said yeah. He say, hey,
you know, Gary Vane is thinking about coming to my
git and bringing k C down there. I said, no way,
you're kidding, man, This is great. We're pretty good anyway,

(01:01:09):
but you Kse can hit it from half court any time.
You know, She's she's probably the best shooter that I coached,
you know, And in Wilson County, Kendall Spray and her
would be the two best shooters I've probably ever seen.
So I was I was really happy about that. And
we got to the state tournament. She was a big
factor in the game against Pile. They played a packed
end zone and she wore them out. And then the

(01:01:31):
state finals, her and Micka Bowman, both who were sophomores
on that team, I thought, played tremendous roles and US
win the state championship that night. They did some great
things and Mick hit some free throws down the stretch
and got beat the press for US, and KC hit
some big threes right before the halftime that put US
in the lead. So that was a good pickup getting
k Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
So we we go through the season undefeated, get through
the district semi final, region can't lose, you win. The
only game you can lose is the region championship and
that and it was against Wilson Central. So that night.
What happened that night that was it was It was
kind of weird because everybody from a fans standpoint was like,

(01:02:13):
you know, this team hasn't lost all year. There's a
lot of pressure, and it's like, I don't know, some
people believe in good losses, some people don't. But I
remember talking to Brittany after that game. She's like, I'm
just relieved we lost the game that we we didn't
want to lose, but we lost the game that we
could afford to lose if you will, And she's like,
I think we'll be good for now. But from your perspective,
what was going on in your head?

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
You know, the main thing is right there. I'm glad
Brittany said that to you, because she could have came
in and said, I hate coach Fryer. He cussed us
after the game, he wants to kill us. And then
they go in and they don't play the way they're kept.
So she, at least in her mind, was like the
team was thinking that wasn't a bad We didn't get
through this, and we're going to be better off for it.
That was some of the dumbest coaching I think I've

(01:02:54):
ever done.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
That.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
First off, we had beat Central in the district tournament
by thirty the week before, I mean just one week
before prior. They had nothing to lose, and they had
a good team, and they also had one of the
best coaches in the state sitting on the bench. Camebell Brandon,
and he came up with a defensive plan where he
was just in our way the whole night, so we

(01:03:16):
couldn't break out and get a ten or twelve point leads.
We're just playing nick and tuck and if you remember,
the score was in the thirties, which that's very unusual.
But he In tournament basketball, the game becomes more of
a half court game. You can't depressing and that kind
of stuff. Kind of the other teams are used to
that by now, they've gotten their self in shape to
handle that kind of stuff. So it became a very
half court game. We got very stagnant on offense because

(01:03:39):
they were in the way of everything we tried to do.
They just took and switched and dropped somebody into the
high posts that kind of sold or high low game down,
and they ran some kind of zone matchup and we
didn't have a good plan against it. I did anything
for that night. Of course, we'd beat them thirty, so
we probably went into the game some of the girls
were a little bit and this is going to be easy.

(01:04:00):
And then the last play of the game, I remember
we had a chance to win it and I said, gosh, girls,
everybody's going to be guarding the leash. I said, let's
go to k C. Let's do this and go to
k C. In any Casey's fault. She she missed a
shot or it got blocked or something, and I thought,
who and what coach in their right mind would not
have gone to But right after that game, I think

(01:04:23):
we played the best game we played all year. We
went to Hillsboro and the gym was packed and her
kids played. If you saw that game, there were lights out.
Every pass was precise, every shot was perfect. It was
a dream. One of the best experiences I had as
a coach was the night we went to Hillsboro to
qualify to go to state tournament.

Speaker 1 (01:04:41):
It was interesting because the post player I went I
ended up going to college when she played at Tribecca
and I remember talking to her how speech class with
her and I was I was asking her about it,
She's like, it was so frustrating. It felt like a
moundule at home game. And then it was just she
couldn't get she couldn't do anything.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
Yeah, and she was like the main person percent of
the crowd, and it was a packed gym. Was Mount
Gulant and they had a girl, Jessica Mooney that was
on that team that signed with but she was a
tremendous player. That was a great thing about coaching Alisha
and Christian both because they played on top notch au
teams and they knew Jessica going into that game, so

(01:05:19):
they weren't I think they played on the same team,
so they weren't frightened by the best players on the
other team and they could kind of give me information.
And I remember asking Alicia we played he was where
I said, Alicia, who guards Jessica Mooney? I've been looking
at this Who's gonna guard money? And I said, can
you guard her? And she says, no, I can't guard her.
I said, oh my gosh, We're in trouble. Then I

(01:05:39):
guess I put Christian Onner. Christian did a great job
in the first player of that game. I won't forget it.
Holly Hudson jumps out in the passing lane, intercepts, the
ball goes down. She's a leop It's do nothing. And
it was on. From that point on, it was it
was over.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Place was going nuts, going reeling back. I wanted to
go back to a story you told her, and during
the reunion, calling selfish, that team was wanted you to
tell the Christian Gibson story when she went off for
like forty points one night, which is not her that
I thought that was kind of the body embodiment of
that specific team because people just did whatever they were

(01:06:15):
asked to do that night, and then you go to
the next game.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
And that's the whole team. Holton, the girl that didn't
ever play, she was ready to play. And that's what
people don't understand. She might not have been getting to play,
but if we put her into the game, she was
gonna do her job. She knew what to do. No
one was neglected as far as being prepared and Christian
that night, Rick Nzel does like Campbell Brandon, He's gonna

(01:06:40):
he says, we can't beat a leeh. Clark, No way,
we beat them one on one. So he doubles Alisha.
He keeps somebody in there to double page or she
catches the ball. And about the second or third time
down the floor, it takes you if you say, so,
what are they doing? He said, they're not guarding Gibson.
Gibson average probably five or six points a game when
she could hit a open three, and she could hit,

(01:07:01):
but she wasn't crating. She was starting the offense and
doing her job. Well. That night we realized she wasn't guarding.
She comes down the floor and she comes up to
the line and goes to the right little bit and
she where everybody's going to shoot the ball. And she
shoots it and misses. Okay, something happens. She might have
missed the next shot, and I called time mind, I said, Gibson,

(01:07:23):
you're not used to shooting this way, I said, Golden.
And when you come down the floor, start the offense,
make a pass to somebody. But when it comes back
to you, get your feet set and you're prepared for
the ball before it comes, and you get ready to
shoot the ball. So she come down, she throw it
to the right wing. She'd get on the line, get
her hands ready, to get her feet ready, she'd get
the ball back and she'd shoot the three. She had

(01:07:43):
to hit eight or nine three that she scored thirty
six thirty eight points that night. And the part of
the story I was telling the night of this was
some people probably didn't expect that I did. I knew
she could do that. Our team knew that. No one
thought Christian couldn't shoot, that she couldn't have a night
like that. The most important part of that, though, to

(01:08:04):
show the uncelptious of the team, is the next game
we play. That was on a Friday night. I would
think because we were at shovel. We come back on
Tuesday night and Gibson's guarden and she goes back to
scoring five or six points a game like she and
doing her job, her role. A lot of parents and
a lot of kids today, I don't think understand that
they would say, well, gosh, if she can score thirty six.

(01:08:25):
She old to try to score thirty six every night,
and you know, Christian would become more selfish and she
would shoot more. She'd try to score more because at
home she was getting pressure saying, hey, you can't have
a night like you had a shovel. That wasn't that team.
Her mom and dad didn't call me, didn't get on Christian.
As far as I know, Christian did her job, did

(01:08:46):
her role, and she just came back did her job. Now,
if they wouldn't have guard her on down the road,
I think she had had thirty something again. But it
just shows that that team, they did their job. Everybody
did their job to be successful, so they weren't trying
to do more than they were supposed to do. And
to me, that's pure basketball. That's what you enjoyed about coaching,

(01:09:07):
and that's what you That was my go every year
was that you'd have kids that were neither role, were
unselfish and would do what they were supposed to do.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
And she did that night, and the team definitely took
the approach of well, coach Friar's captain blood. But we're together,
you know, because that night, I remember how happy everybody
was for her. Nobody was jealous. Alicia wasn't pounding down
the post, neither was Paige. It was just like it
was like a bunch of sisters playing a basketball game
all year long. It was crazy. It's almost like you

(01:09:37):
knew that you know, Alicia was always going to be
standing stand out, but you never knew when Paige was
going to go on a run like she did in
this day tournament. You never know when Pig would get hot,
and you're just watching this thing just kind of cycling
and out, and it was really fun to watch so
Lead Central lose to Central when you got to win

(01:09:59):
that next game to qualify to get into the state tournament.
And since my stepdad was a sporting goods guy, I
got to be down on the bows of the glasshouse
during the state tournament, which was a lot of fun
to mix in with different people. But what was that like?
Because you'd been there two years before, But what was
it like coming in to that one? I remember? The
only thing I remember from the outside looking in is

(01:10:19):
that it was like a business trip for those girls.
There was no like hanging out on the weekend or nothing.
Nobody's doing anything but that was it. So we were
kind of like we didn't know what was going on.
It felt like y'all were like the Patriots that week.
We were like, what is well, are they gonna come
out of life? What was that? What was that State tournament,
like to kind of get on the bus, get ready

(01:10:40):
to go, and then it's like, all right, here we go.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
When you know, when you go to the state tournament,
in which we were fortunate to go several times, it
makes going there is the favorite is a lot different.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
Than going there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
It's like you got to avoid this team, right. We
were the team that people had to avoid that year
and all the years I coached, that only happened one time,
and that was that year. We were the team that
people did not want to play. Just to start off with.
We drew a tough Cleveland team to start to start
the tournament, and they had two big time girls that
were Division one players, and I had a tough time

(01:11:14):
with them. They were hard to those tough kids. But
I think going back to some of our workouts and
how tough they were, that really kind of helped us.
We weren't going to lose that kind of team at
that point. And we had played Pile, who we played
in the semis at Christmas and we didn't barely beat them,
but it was a close game throughout. We played in
Greenable that night, we didn't have any trouble. We were

(01:11:35):
much better prepared. We knew about there. They had a
big Ogden girl that was like six three six y four,
so we were better prepared for that, and then playing
Diersburg in the finals was the new experiences. We had
never played Diresburg. Looking back on that game, though, man,
they were loaded and they were huge. Their two postgirls
were over six foot and athletic and long, and their
little guards could shoot.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
The little guards were scrappy. It felt like we were
looking at a mirror image of ourselves. Yes, So when
we were sitting there watching so the state championship game,
I was so nervous. I didn't sit with the students.
I think it was me Ryan Hill, and I think
my dad was home for whatever reason. So I was like,
you come too. So we sat like right directly on
student sections over here, and I'm like, I feel like

(01:12:17):
I'm just watching a different version the scrappiness, the toughness,
and I'm like, diars Bur, where the heck I got
on my I literally was like where is Dyers birth?
And I was like, you got these country girls coming
in here. And if I remember that state tournament was
a bunch of rural teams, yeah, yeah, yeah, it wasn't.
It was a bunch of like stocked country girls coming

(01:12:37):
in there, cornfed, just ready to beat the crap out
of somebody. So I remember Dyersburg was the first game
all year where I was like, we may not win
this game like they were and they gave it. They
gave it to you guys, the entire game they did.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
Randy Kaufman was coaching over there, and he was He
was a baseball guy. He had coached Diersburg baseball team
and then he was like May he fell in love
with coaching girls basketball and he's still coaching today, the
Pages head coach today.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
That was a good team.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
He won a few state championships at Riverdale, so after
he left his hometown that was Dyersburg. He didn't win
it at hometown. But he had that fiery deal too.
Those kids had been worked. It was not like they
were softer, they were not prepared. He did a good
job in that area. So it was, you know, that
was exciting. The whole thing was exciting to me. But

(01:13:24):
I had a lot of confidence that we're going to
win and then and part of that confidence all of
our kids. It was equal how people worked and what
they were doing to get prepared and get ready. But
when you have a player like Alicia, you know, neither
team as a player like that. So I've been beat
by teams who had that kind of player and you

(01:13:46):
just can't hurly, you just can't get over them. They're
going to find a way to wield their team to
a win. And that night, if you remember, she hit
two or three threes and she had never even taken
h I mean, that's just what a winner day. She
stepped out. We were running an offense where we could
put page in the post and isolate a smaller player maybe,

(01:14:07):
and Alisha popped out and they didn't guard her. She
looked at it once and she shot it dead center
in WNBA. She's a pretty good three point shooter.

Speaker 1 (01:14:15):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I hear a lot of parents today they get mad
because when the kid's good size and you got them
in high school, people put them like I would put
them in the post, because why don't want my kid
to be in the post? Put them out there on
the parameter, let them shoot.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Lisha played in the post, but she was able to convert,
convert and move her game into a three point But
she became great scoring around the bucket. Why not be
the main score and just do it around the bucket
in high school and figure it out as you go
on through, you know. But I see so many big
kids will pop out there and shoot at three sell them.
A caved played for me. She was six three and
she would pop out she, I said, Sally. But Alisa,

(01:14:50):
she hit a couple of prees in that game. So
that was that was exciting. If you remember that night,
that game didn't start to like nine o'clock PM. We
did not get done into eleven.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Oh I remember, and then we all went back to
the gym. Yeah, went back to the gym. Everybody went
right back to the gym. That place was packed. There
was a game going on there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Yeah, I'm very appreciative that mel Brown was our prince.
It was awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:15:13):
It was his first year or two. Yeah, it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
It was a great way to meet him. I'd heard
a lot of things about him, and then for us
to win a state championship. He was going to do
those things right. Those girls got treated, yeah, the right
way because they had the right Princeville, a guy that
was in charge was really good to them.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
He changed the whole school. I think everybody was still
reeling from the split, and he brought everything back. He
bought the pride back to the school for sure. Yeah. RP. Mail. Yeah,
he was really good friends with my stepdad. He ended up,
you know, my stepdad who started calling baseball games because
we just need somebody to fill in. Ended up doing
that for fifteen to twenty years. They named the press

(01:15:51):
box after him, which was awesome. But I remember when
we were doing the press box. I went to Coach
Purvis En Mail and I was like, can we do
this for my said dad Joe. He's like absolute, But
by the way, I'm going to be there and I'm
gonna hand him the trophy. I mean, the dude just
did things different.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:16:05):
He was awesome. Yeah, he was awesome. I remember he
got stuck in traffic that night, mel did and the
game started like twenty five minutes after it was supposed
to start, and my stepdad is cussing on the field.
He's like, wow, am I down here. Finally Mail gets
there and he gets a hell Melons man. And I
really do think that everything just kind of culminated from there.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
You think about when you think about mister Brown, Me
and Coach Allen talked about this all the time. And
this was after we'd won the state and coach Allen
came and coached the boys. We would be at Station
Camp or Beach on a Tuesday night, and he's in
his seventies and he would drive to those games. And
after our girls' games, I would leave the first quarter
of the boys because I was so worn out. I

(01:16:48):
didn't even stay well. Mail and his wife Carol stayed
for the boys games and they didn't leave until after
that game. Then he'd be at school the next day
before six. I mean, who can do that? Who does that?
That's a saying. I mean, I don't know. I don't
know who can pull that off.

Speaker 1 (01:17:03):
But it was awesome. I mean it was. I remember
when we first came in, it was hard to we
had the principle we had before that was so kind
of lax on just being straight. That whole school just
we all hated him for about two weeks because we
were like everything changed and then discipline and doing what
you're supposed to be doing. We're still dealing with stinking
dress code back then. So he knew into pull and

(01:17:23):
push and but yeah, I'm sure he was a He's
the one that gave Ryan his start and told him
you're gonna have to coach girls. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:17:30):
He did a good job of building relationships with students.
He knew y'all's names, and there was, you know, sixteen
hundred kids. That's not easy to do.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
I remember when I had my big blow up on
the baseball team. I was in his office the next morning,
and it wasn't because I wanted to be there. It's
because he f he somehow knew what happened. And I
got called in there and it was like, what do
you think? You know, he's like talking to me about it. It
was like I felt like, you you know, he's like
a grandpa or something. But going going, going back through.

(01:17:58):
So you coach for if I read it was twenty
two years you went to ten state tournaments, which is crazy.
That's like an Izzo stat right there, Like basically if
you spread those out, almost every four year team would
have gone to a state tournament in their careers, if
you you know, do it that way. And then but
there's this there's this dedication, and you talked about it

(01:18:19):
at the very very beginning, but I wanted to touch
on it. Your wife comes to you and she says, well,
you can't do both of these things. Well, you're you're
raising these boys, and you got this wife who I
saw at a lot of games with little Ian on
her carrying them around. What what kind of what was
that dynamic like? You know, you got the coach's wife,
and I'm sure she could be in here telling her

(01:18:40):
own story of being a coach's wife. What was that
dynamic like from a support to be able to do
that and be successful while keeping keeping a marriage, raising
your kids, not having your kids resent you, now having
your wife resent you. How'd you pull that off? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
I didn't pull it off. I ain't. She pulled it off.
She was, She was wonderful and she I think she
saw my job as a calling for me as far
as being a coach and being around kids. And you know,
we did a lot of things with our players. We
brought them over to the house at Christmas time, We
always had a thing in the fall before the season started,
and she loved the girls and her personality. She can

(01:19:18):
never be a coach because she is so loving and caring.
And you've got to be a coach. You got to
really have thick skin. You can't let things bother you
and you got to kind of ignore certain things. If
you do, you're gonna be up and down all the time.
So but she was wonderful at the house, and she
came to all the ball games the kids. I give
her credit for raising our boys, and we have just

(01:19:39):
got our three boys have been so good and very
little that I would say came from me. I mean,
I did think I would feel so sorry for them.
After we would lose her last basketball games. I remember
going into the bedrooms and laying down with them or
trying to talk to them because I had missed a
lot of those times during the season that I didn't
get to spend with my guys. But you know, teach

(01:20:03):
is not a bad thing to be involved. And you
get the summers, you're gonna be with them more. And
then they're always around the gym every state ternament, I
had one of them sitting on the bench with me,
and Jordan would go into the media room with me.
So they saw a lot of that stuff and they
were able to share in that. But raising them and
making them good Christian kids that you know, do the

(01:20:23):
right things at work hard. They have such a great
work ethic, all three of them do. And I just
give credit to my wife for that, Jennifers, She's another saint.
I was fortunate to marry someone who cares about people
the way she does, and she cared about our family
and it made everything easier. If you don't have that
support at home, it becomes even more stressful. Then you

(01:20:44):
bringing even more anger into your profession or what you're doing.
And it was just a She was a big part
of our success, I would say, just by the way
she was and the way she raised her boys.

Speaker 1 (01:20:57):
Yeah, that's awesome. So you decide, talked about a little bit.
The pandemic came, and I know you and it's probably
not the way you wanted to go out, but you
knew the school was splitting. The tornado happens, then the
pandemic comes. Basketball season's done. What was it? Your retirement

(01:21:18):
wasn't normal, you know, in the sense of like one
last swan song, her last game, celebrate, blah blah blah.
It was just kind of okay over well. Was that
a tough pill to swallow or were you content with
just the situation. I knew that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:37):
Twenty twenty was gonna be my last year. I probably
knew it in twenty twelve, So I had planned on
kind of how long I wanted to coach and how
long I wanted to do this. My wife says it
that I made the true She can't believe the transition
I made from coaching and how much I loved it
and how involved I was to retirement to not being
around it at all. I don't don't I ignore games,

(01:22:01):
but that's just on the top of my list. I
do things that I want to do now that I've retired.
And I played golf with my buddies that I once
a week. We usually hit the golf course, and I
have a gym three star down and on one on
nine that I go work out. I've got a lot
of friends down there I work out with. So my
life just completely changed from what I was doing to
what I'm doing now. And I think a lot of

(01:22:22):
people have trouble with that when they retire, They have
trouble leaving behind what they had done. But those that
when mel Brown retired, that kind of got in my mind, thinking,
you know, this be a good time for me to
kind of get out of this and Green Hills fixing
to be built. I was getting phone calls up by

(01:22:43):
here you're gonna come over here to Green Hill and coach.
And if I was going to stay and I was younger,
I probably would have made that move. Although I hated
to leave Mount Gullett because that was where I grew
up and where I played. But my best talent, my
best kids were coming from that area over there at
the time, and I didn't know what magit was going
to be getting. I didn't really want to go through
that again. I'd already done it with Wilson Central. I

(01:23:03):
didn't want to have to do it again at Mount Juliet,
having to get it all started over again and get
involved in all that. So I think it was a
good timing for me. I was ready to be done.
I miss having a good team and competing in basketball.
You know, we went to the state tournament in twenty
eighteen and twenty nineteen and we were competitive and we

(01:23:27):
had and it was fun coaching those teams and having
a chance to be at the state tournament. You know,
there's some advantage that it's the fund that but I
don't miss the grind every day, just that pressure, the
financial pressure of what you got to raise money for
for the school, the pressure of dealing with parents who
are unhappy, people who are mad at you in the community,

(01:23:49):
and over time that stuff builds up to you know,
I've had a lot of friends, and I know you
said you have coached. I've had a lot of friends.
I've lost that where their kids came out and played
and they didn't get to play, and they're not longer friends.
I don't go to their store, I don't call their
record service. And you got to get tired of it
the bad guy, you know, you know, you know what

(01:24:09):
it takes to have success, what you want to do
to have success. But I'm not addicted to it that
I have to keep doing it. I'm enjoying this next
chapter of my life. I spend a lot more time
with my wife and my get to see my grandkids,
and that stuff's a lot of fun too. And can
coach el right. I play golf with him and Jerry
Pigg he coached in Nashville, coach a hunter's lane And

(01:24:33):
they say, you know, some some coaches have a hard
time with retirement. It don't seem like you're having a
hard time at all. It's been a good transition for
me to take the next step, the next chapter and
enjoy life. I feel like I'm living my best life
now and and I had a great career too. I've
got great memories. I don't regret any of those teams

(01:24:53):
or anything. And there's some things I wish I might
have done a little bit different, but I think overall
it was an enjoy book experience. And I always kind
of looked at coaching as a one year deal. I
was going to do my best for one year and
if they didn't like it, they could fire me. And
I'm fortunate I got to go out and not get fired,
I guess. And it was a weird time though. We
just had the tornadoes hit and Mount Juleet, and the

(01:25:15):
hardest part was the boys that year were doing so
well and we thought they were going to win a
state championship and then it just stopped the state tournament completely.
And I was like, t de Troy knew I was
not playing on coaching more. I said, Troy, I don't
really want to announce it. I'm retiring while you're on
this run going to the state to take something away
from what you guys are doing. I don't want to

(01:25:36):
get involved in it. So it ended up being like
this is taking too long. So I'm going to go
ahead and let them know. My son in went to
the last one went to Watertown, and I heard you
and at Lasha talking about this too. You know a
lot of times you get focused on one sport, like
you're playing basketball. If you play basketball, you're not playing volleyballs,

(01:25:56):
you're not playing softball, or your your baseball. Guys really
didn't play football and didn't they were focusing and mind
it was that kind of school where the competition was
so tough you had to be pretty zero in on
what you yere year round. Yeah, well we didn't want
that for end. We had seen that with their older
two and when he went out to Watertown, he played basketball,

(01:26:17):
he played football, and he played tennis and he went
to the state tournament in tennissee, so he got to
experience some of that. And I'm not saying one's better
than the other. You just had to make the decision
what you want to do. And I remember telling girls
this too. If you get behind because you got to
go to pitching in softball, and if you have to
sit the bench, it's not because you went to pitching

(01:26:40):
and somebody's passed you up. You got to make that decision,
and that's how elite, the three A level, six A
level at that time, how it is, and it's kind
of your decision.

Speaker 1 (01:26:51):
So yeah, it was. It was definitely like that. It
became that for sure, that it was one one sports school.
But I'm glad that you you allowed him to do
that because playing a bunch of sports is just how
it should be. Should if you're if you're not, I'd say,
if there's not an opportunity to win a state championship,
you probably should be playing multiple sports. I think everybody

(01:27:12):
was invested in that run and it was all worth it.
And I remember Page I got sent that news clip
because I was in there twice saying something stupid, and
Page is saying, well, I'm glad that work finally paid
off for something.

Speaker 2 (01:27:25):
And he was doing it for someone.

Speaker 1 (01:27:27):
He was doing it for some reason, and that kind
of was like the whole thing of it, and it
was it was a good time. Yeah. I was asking
Ryan when we were there, I was like, what's he
doing now? He's like, man, he's he's living the dream
right now. I think he's playing golf, hanging out, maybe
cutting some grass. And he's like, I go to some
Titans games.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):
But I just quit on the year this Texans game.
I heard there's gonna be five dollars tickets last season tickets.
Not got much bout it right now, those things you
think about doing when you're coaching and you're raising your
family when you get to the point in life, I said,
I'm will do that. Yeah, so that's kind of what
I'm doing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
I had a similar situation, but it was with tax
seasons and I did about ten of those, and I said,
you know what, I've never been to the Master's which
I still haven't. I've never get to go on the
spring training, never got to do all this stuff in
the in the so it's like every time when January
starts and Saturdays coming around, like not working work, working
these long hours anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:28:20):
But you know, COVID kind of made me that a
way to you And when I saw some people passed
away or died during the other why were we really
doing this? I mean, it's the point where there's some
things in life you need to enjoy, you might as
well do it. And I enjoyed those years. I wouldn't
want to start over now with the way things are,
but back then it was a great. It was a
magical era in time. We had the right kind of

(01:28:41):
kids and the right kind of people.

Speaker 1 (01:28:43):
You did. And back when I lived in Mount Juliet,
especially through college, and I still my doctors and Dennis
were out there for the first couple of years of
being married, and I'd run into old players of yours
and they they wouldn't know I wasn't necessarily, but then
they find out who it was, and blah blah blah.
And there's so many what I would call good citizen,
hardworking people in society now that came out of the

(01:29:05):
Lady Bear program. So that's nothing to shake out, you know.
That's that's a real thing. Like everybody that I've ever
talked to that played in that regime is out doing
something and is doing it well, which is crazy. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
I think it's awesome. And they were the right kind
of people and they had the right kind of parents.
But they also what we were doing wasn't a joke.
It was serious, and I think they've taken their life
a lot of them, and it's serious still.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
Even some that didn't, like Brittany, she just decided after
her shoulder got messed up. She's like, I'm just kind
of done. But whatever happened from coach Johnson to through
or sophomore year is just stuck with her, even all
the way through. I mean anything she did. She had
a good run in her murals at the University of Georgia. Yeah,
and it was playing flag football, tearing people out, playing soccer,
tear people up. So I didn't know you play soccer,

(01:29:53):
She goes, I didn't know how to play. So but
it's all and she's like it helped her get through
nursing school. It's like, if the hardest thing thing you
ever have to do, at least in your young life
is play basketball, it kind of sets you up when
life really hits you with the tragedy and.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
All this life is not easy. And I used to
tell our girls there's no free lunches out there. You're
gonna have to work. I didn't really want them depending
on a guy. I want them to depend on themselves
if they could do it, and I didn't, you know,
And I think the coaching girls, there's certain responsibilities. I
think a lot of times they're the leaders of the family.
If you go to see a family going to church,

(01:30:28):
it's mostly the woman that's getting the children and telling
the husband and they get them moving in the right direction.
So I always kind of thought about those things when
I was coaching, saying, you don't have it. You're so
much tougher than guys are. They don't even realize that
what you go through and what you were having to
go through having kids, how tough that is, and then
taking care of your family. It's just not easy. So

(01:30:50):
we tried to do things or I did that would
you know, make them a little tougher, and hopefully they
enjoyed it. I think they enjoyed their relationships with each other.
But like I said, when I was at Mount Dult,
I'm not saying my coaches weren't serious. I liked them,
but they didn't push me, and that that extra push
is what I want them to remember. Hey, when things

(01:31:12):
are tough, when things are hard, it's not too hard
for you. You can handle it. So that was kind
of my goal kind of the way I saw it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:21):
Well, it's been good. We just brought all ninety minutes
and it felt like we just blinked.

Speaker 2 (01:31:25):
That's great. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
I hav it is good.

Speaker 2 (01:31:28):
Anytime we talk about Mount gel It and our experiences
growing up around there. I have no trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:31:34):
Oh it's easy. It's easy. It was a cool place
to grow up. It's a lot different than it used
to be, that whole thing, and it's it's definitely uh,
it's very fond going down memory lane. We when you
it's weird because you know, we didn't stay We moved
over here this side of town, so you kind of
lose touch. You stay in touch, but you lose touch.
But you know, the twenty year reunion and all that stuff,

(01:31:56):
it just kind of brought everything back getting reconnected with
the lead Ushah last year when I was doing the podcast.
So it was just like, it's just fun because you know,
you when you're in those moments, generally it's all about
how hard it was and how much it sucked. Yeah,
and then you get years and years down the road
and you're like, well that's pretty good. I'm glad I

(01:32:17):
went through that. Yeah, and then you just pick up
right where you left off of people when you see them. Yeah,
that's what the reunion was. It was awesome just see
kind of people, just people still getting up trying to
give you crap.

Speaker 2 (01:32:26):
Man.

Speaker 1 (01:32:26):
It was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:32:27):
It's like, you know, it's amazing that little of those
girls had changed in twenty years or oh I've kept
themselves in such great shape and there all of them
are successful, even you know stay at home moms, how
hard they work in their families as a success they have.
It's really amazing when you have groups like that. Image
just a special place because I really see a lot
of people graduate over the years and what they become.

(01:32:50):
Sometimes they're not much in high school and they turn
out to be great. They're always overachieving, and I love that.
That's been That's been my favorite part about being in
the community.

Speaker 1 (01:33:00):
No. I remember when Britt decided she just wanted to
be a stay at home mom. I was like, all right, well,
I'll figure it out financially. And she runs our house
like you know, it's like no nonsense, everything's planned out,
and especially with her kid with allergies, it's just like
and it's all it all goes back to these this
stuff that was built. And I was telling her, I

(01:33:21):
was like, how do we build resilience into our kids?
Because I got two girls now and it's like, you know,
now we're trying to figure it out in this day
and age, how we're going to do that. So it's
I'm lucky that I have heard and she's been through
some stuff to be able to say, well, here's how
we're going to do.

Speaker 2 (01:33:35):
I remember, Brittany, I'm being injured in that state tournament
year and not being able to play that young, but
she was. We had hopes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:43):
For her, I know, to her and what's crazy is
they fix that shoulder and it still pops out. Really yeah,
so she quit. She pretty much quit all sports once
she I think it popped out during either inner mural
or a pickup basketball game in college and then that's
when she that's when she stopped. We moved over to
like tennis and some other stuff where we have to,
but yeah, she was. She's one of those people that

(01:34:05):
was better at softball, she thought, than basketball. But he
made her choice, and so here's what we're going to do.
And I remember back in the day, you know, there
used to be those shooting charts and she'd bring them
home and I think we're gonna hang out or something
and watch TV and just peddal and I'm out there
rebounding for it like an aw. Her dad pulls in
the driveway and he's like, I'm like Friars guys out

(01:34:26):
here shooting rebound The.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Coach Allen brought that. He said, you know those some
of those girls. This is later on, after those girls
had moved on, because they would do what you asked
them today. Yes, he said, what do you what do
you do with the You know they're not doing those
shooting charts. They're not doing it. I said, listen, that's
on them. I don't care. I give it to them
and if they don't want to do it, it'll show up.
But I'm not gonna sit there like the boys. He
had to be with them doing everything because they're not
going to do jack. But I said, the girls, You'll

(01:34:51):
be amazing how many that will do it. And I've
given them something to do and if they want to
be better, they'll work at it. Some might not, but
that's on them, it's not I.

Speaker 1 (01:35:01):
Just remember for Christmas that year before she had the surgery,
I got her one of those rebounding things. So I
have to sit down there and come back to yeah. Yeah,
so she made it came back to her. If it
bounced off, I get it. But yeah, it was a
crazy time. Well, this has been awesome, man, thank you
for coming in. And I appreciate it. It. It was
a lot of fun, just rekindling everything. The reunion was
so short. The girls were all kind of like, we

(01:35:23):
kind of wish we could have just spent hours, Yeah,
just chilling, you know. Yeah, or went back to the
middle school which was used to be the high school.
Went back to the old locker room. Yeah, you know,
found the old sectional, just sat around, Yeah, traded worse.

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Yes, they I think when we won the state that year,
they spent the night down there in that locker room,
you know that run when we came back, and that
was pretty crazy. So but they did. They were attached
to it pretty good. So you go through all that
work and you do all that and then all of
a sudden it ends. You go to college or you
do whatever you're gonna do. But you know, all that
fast pace and all this being things you required to

(01:35:59):
do no longer exists. So now you have your own
things to require your ship to do.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
But I really caught up with almost several of them.
They're also they just still all live these fast paced,
running gun lives. Yeah, just moving and grooving kids, mess
the kids everywhere doing this, doing that, and you're.

Speaker 2 (01:36:14):
Just like okay, all right, it's it's it's crazy special
special group, special kids for sure during that time.

Speaker 1 (01:36:21):
All Right, man, well this is awesome. Thanks for coming in.

Speaker 2 (01:36:23):
Hey, I thank you for asking me to do it.
I enjoyed it. And like I said, anytime I can
talk about mind jew basketball, I enjoyed.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
It's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:36:30):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:36:30):
All right, guys, Thank you guys for listening and supporting.
It's been another episode of the Encadible podcast