Dalton State's Coach Redman Tells His Story

  • Monday, December 1, 2014
  • Bob Beavers
Dalton State senior associate athletic director Richard Skeel, Coach John Redman, and Kiwanian John Thomas
Dalton State senior associate athletic director Richard Skeel, Coach John Redman, and Kiwanian John Thomas

John Redman, Dalton State’s young basketball coach who has been through so much this year, told members of the Kiwanis Club of Dalton about his triumphs and heartbreaks.

Coach Redman chose the civic club’s Monday meeting at the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center to tell his story. “If telling my story helps one single person, it’s good,” the coach told the Kiwanians.

“We have a lot to be thankful for,” Redman said. “We’ve been able to take 15 kids and turn into a family. The love they have for each other; they really do have it and  that’s why they are so good.”

He talked about being recruited to play basketball at Spring Hill College in Mobile and how he received a career ending injury just nine months later. Tuition at Spring Hill was about $40,000 a year and his head coach asked him to stay in school with tuition paid by serving as a student assistant coach.

He recalled meeting Brittany Huber when she came to watch her brother play on an AAU basketball team that he was coaching in Mobile.

Redman said he met Dalton State Coach Tony Ingle at the 1013 Final Four. Coach Ingle talked about being hired at his hometown college to restart the basketball program and how excited he was to accept the challenge. Coach Redman said he called Ingle a number of times and finally, in June, he was invited up to Dalton to interview as the Roadrunner assistant. Ingle had been looking and older assistants but he saw something in the young coach.

“Coach called me at 3:00 a.m. to offer me the job,” Redman said. “It sure made the drive back to Mobile more exciting.”  Huber, by then his fiancé, was working on her masters in Mobile and Redman attempted to get her to stay and complete the program. She insisted on moving to Dalton to start their lives together.

Redman almost immediately hit the recruiting trail and he and Ingle put together a (26-4) team that would have the best record in all of college basketball for 2013-2014. Huber took a position as a teaching assistant at City Park Elementary in Dalton.

A May 3 wedding was planned and the couple had big dreams. On Monday, April 28, the couple left Dalton on the way to their Saturday wedding. Redman doesn’t remember anything about that day. He has been told that they stopped for coffee at a Starbucks and picked up a couple of dresses at Anthropologie in an Atlanta mall.

The couple had driven about 40 miles south of Atlanta to Meriwether County when a  tire blew out and the Lexis IS 250 the coach was driving hydroplaned and hit one of the very few bridge supports in the state of Georgia that doesn’t have a guard rail in front of it. He has since been told that his beloved Brittany was dead when paramedics arrived on the scene. It didn’t look like John would survive.

“It happened. It wasn’t a dream,” Redman said.

The weather was too bad for a helicopter to land, so he was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta by ambulance. Emergency workers couldn’t find IDs, but he was wearing Dalton State gear. Officials called the Dalton State public safety office. Authorities were told to call Tony Ingle. Coach Redman said it is a miracle that he survived and beyond a miracle that he is back recruiting and coaching basketball.

“He was bleeding profusely from every orifice,” witness Laura Mullins said. “He was choking on his own blood.” Coach Redman was in about a two-week coma, followed by another 10 to 12 days of sedation. He had 21 fractures in his skull, eight broken teeth, a broken jaw, five ribs broken so badly that they had to be surgically removed, and serious brain trauma.

Doctors had told his family and friends to not answer any questions of Brittany until he was ready to find out. Meanwhile, he is in bed wondering why she had not bothered to visit him. When it was time, Brittany’s dad came to hospital and had the difficult decision to tell John that the family is glad that he was getting better, but that “Brittany didn’t make it.”

From Grady, Redman was transferred to The Shepherd Center near Piedmont Hospital. “It’s pretty awesome. It changed my life,” the coach said of the center. He made the gradual steps to rebuild his stimulus, regain his speech, and more. The coach returned to Dalton State in early August and he is proud that he was able to bring in three recruits before school started later that month.

He credits the Shepherd Center along with the love of family and friends for helping him recover. “I cry every day,” Redman said. “Usually when I first get up.”

The condo near the college is just as Brittany had left it. She always wanted the bed made every morning with 12 pillows and he still does that with all 12 pillows. "It’s healing. It gets everything going.”

“I go sit in the closet and smell her,” Redman said. He said he tells his story because “if it helps one person, it’s good.”

“Even small prayers are powerful,” Redman said of the importance of faith in his recovery. 

 

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