(Here's a condensed and updated version of a column I wrote last year for the Mason County Beat about Pendleton County boys basketball coach Chad Simms.)
It is probably safe to say Chad Simms wouldn’t be a high school basketball coach today if he hadn’t moved to Maysville from Wyoming.
Simms, the boys varsity assistant head coach at Pendleton County, lived with his mom in Cheyenne, Wyoming from age seven to 15. Basketball isn’t that big of deal in the Cowboy State.
Simms moved to Maysville to live with his dad between his freshman and sophomore years in high school. He didn’t know a lot about Kentucky high school hoops.
"Just from talking to my family, all I knew about was Mason County and The Fieldhouse," Simms said.
He had played a lot of basketball during his summer visits to Maysville.
"I’d go down to Jack Condon’s down in Maysville and play in his backyard," Simms said.
"I also played a lot down at Rotary Park."
Simms says once he enrolled at Mason County, he met a lot of nice people who were
basketball players.
"Scott Reule, Trey Clark, Richie Butler, those guys, Shawn Myrick," Simms said. "[I] started hanging out with those guys, and things started going more smoothly for me then." Simms played basketball for three seasons and football for two years. He remembers the first time he walked in The Fieldhouse.
"I got goose bumps. It was for a PE class," he said.
Simms says he learned a lot from his coaches "about becoming a young man, doing things the right way and being accountable."
While a student at Morehead State University, Simms had a job at a local store. Mason County Royals coach Kelly Wells and his wife, Shawne, were shopping at the store, when Simms asked Wells about coaching.
"I never even really thought about it until then," Simms said. He started asking Wells about helping with the team and what he could do.
"Every question I asked, coach Wells said ‘yes’," Simms said. "He invited me out to [the first practice] October 15th ... I showed up at The Fieldhouse."
Simms was a volunteer coach at Mason County for the freshman, junior varsity and varsity teams in the 1999-2000 season.. The next year, he was again a volunteer coach mainly keeping stats at the games because he was going to school at Northern Kentucky University and driving back and forth.
After his second season at Mason County, Simms decided he was going to quit coaching, and finish college. But he didn’t quit.
Buddy Biggs, who had been an assistant coach at Mason County, was named the head coach at Pendleton County. The late Pat Moore, who was also an assistant coach for the Royals, told Biggs he should hire Simms as an assistant at Pendleton County.
"I was actually at my mom’s visiting that summer," Simms said. "And I got back from Wyoming visiting, and I had about 13 messages on my phone from coach Biggs telling me to call him."
"Even after that, it took me about two days to go ahead and call him."
Biggs hired Simms as the freshman coach at Pendleton County. Biggs says Simms has been a great addition to the Wildcats program.
"I wanted somebody who would work hard and bring the passion that I was bringing to the table because I knew I was lacking experience, and we were just going to try to out-work people," Biggs said. "And Chad has brought that to the table."
Biggs says he knew Simms could coach because that first year the top four players on the freshman team were moved up to junior varsity and Simms still had a winning record with the freshman team.
"I knew right then we had a special young man as our assistant coach," Biggs said. "That proved to me he could handle just about anything."
Simms was promoted to junior varsity coach, a position he held for two seasons. He was the varsity assistant last season, and was promoted to head coach after Biggs took the coaching job at Ashland Blazer. Simms has guided a young and inexperienced team to a 10-12. Pendleton County hosts Mason County tonight. Simms is a special education teacher.
No comments:
Post a Comment