Nine years ago, at the age of 26, I was blessed with the opportunity to become the head coach of the Chattooga boys’ basketball program. When I was named head coach, I made a commitment to bring my maximum effort to the young men whom I was going to be privileged to lead, and I was blessed with a team full of great, hard-working boys.

As for Rachel and me, there is no “I” in our two-person team, so the “I” quickly became “we” as Rachel immediately bought in to giving her all to the basketball program as well. For us, this did not begin as some quest to create a win-at-all-costs type of basketball program. This was a calling we felt to bring maximum effort and show unconditional love to a group of young people that we had grown to care a lot about. We set out to provide them with not only the same opportunities and experiences that other programs seemed to enjoy, but better opportunities and experiences than any other basketball program around.

I had a lot of ideas for how we could improve as a team, and I thought these ideas would certainly lead to more success on the court. That first year, we hit the ground running. We knew we needed to breathe life into a program that had gone 26-71 in the previous four seasons and hadn’t made the playoffs during that span, so to create excitement about basketball at Chattooga High School, we signed our team up for three Team Camps at three different NCAA D-1 schools – Georgia Tech, Auburn, and Kennesaw State – for that first summer program in June 2014. Some of the main goals in doing this were to provide our team with off-the-court bonding opportunities and to get our boys out of Chattooga county to see some other things that the world would have to offer to them once they graduated high school. We hoped that some of them would set goals of attending college.

When we actually started playing bigger, more successful schools at these camps that summer, we began to realize that our boys had the potential to be very successful on the court. We would play schools our boys had never heard of, either beat them or play them really closely, and then look on MaxPreps to find out how good the teams really were. It was really exciting to learn that we were having success against AAAAA winning programs. As we continued to have success at these camps, our boys began to grow more confident in their ability to compete with any school of any size. It was exciting to see all of this unfold. We were reaping some serious rewards from attending these camps. Since then, we’ve invested a lot more time and money into attending Team Camps each summer. In addition to those first three schools’ Team Camps we attended back in June 2014, we have now also gone to Florida State, UGA, Alabama and Georgia State over the years for their Team Camps as well. I don’t think people realize how much work goes into taking our teams on these overnight trips, and Rachel has always been the main one behind making these trips happen, so I am extremely grateful to her for all of her hard work over all of these years. These camps have provided some great memories for us that we will cherish forever.

In addition to all of the camps we have taken the boys on, we dreamed up the idea of taking the boys to Disney World one year. We all put in a lot of work to raise the money to take our team on this once-in-a-lifetime trip, and we will be forever grateful to this community for supporting us and helping us to make this trip happen. I think our team left Disney World with a little Disney magic that year as this was the same year that we eventually made it to the Final Four. What a year to remember! All of our years coaching Chattooga basketball have been memorable for us, and we have loved each player on each team along the way.

We hope that all of our boys realize deep in their hearts that the time Rachel and I invested in them was all from a place of love for them. It hurts every year to see things like playing time seemingly get in the way of young men realizing that we truly care about them and want what’s best for them. We have tried to love these young men and spoil them as if they were our own, and a big reason we have been able to do that has been because Rachel and I haven’t had any children of our own. Basketball was our way of filling a void we felt from our inability to have children. We have prayed for the day that we would become parents for over a decade, and on December 28, 2022, God answered that prayer when our precious baby boy entered this world. In that moment, when I laid eyes on my son, I knew that the days of being able to continue giving Chattooga basketball everything that we had been able to give Chattooga basketball for all of these years were numbered.

During the past couple of months, I have gotten a good taste of what it would be like to miss out on time at home with my family if I were to continue coaching, and I wholeheartedly feel that God has led me to step down from coaching basketball at this time. I thank God for the blessings that coaching have brought to Rachel and me. I cannot begin to thank everyone that has made an impact on me or supported the Chattooga boys’ basketball program over the past nine years, but please know that I sincerely appreciate any true Chattooga fans that have stayed positive during my tenure as head coach and have consistently tried to be part of the solution for Chattooga sports and for our young men. It has been an honor to serve these young men and to represent the Tribe. I’ve loved being called “Coach,” but right now, all I’m looking forward to is the first time I’m called “Daddy.”