The Owls are back. A bit rusty, but their hiatus from basketball has ended.
After the Ooltewah boys’ basketball team was disbanded in late 2015 following a horrific incident at a pre-Christmas tournament in Gatlinburg that resulted in two school administrators, the head coach and eventually a school superintendent lose their jobs, new coach Jay Williams led the team back to the court Tuesday night at East Ridge High School.
The Pioneers jumped to an early 21-3 lead and went on to beat the Owls 57-42 at Catherine Neely Gymnasium, but the outcome was not as big a deal as seeing the Ooltewah players simply being on the floor to relaunch the once-dormant program.
“It was fun,” senior Terer McReynolds said after the game. “Last year even before we played our first game I snapped my tail bone and didn’t get to play at all. I watched from the bench the whole time, so this is my first game since my sophomore year.”
McReynolds scored a team-high 14 points.
Tory Morgan added 10 points.
“I had some jitters at first,” he said. “Once on the court they went away and I was OK. I just needed to get back in motion. Last year hurt us. It has been a year since we played and we really have to get back into basketball mode. We’ve been practicing, but that’s not like playing. We’ll get better.”
Actually, the Owls went 329 days since their last game on Dec. 29, a 58-56 loss to rival East Hamilton in a post-Christmas tournament at Chattanooga State. Ooltewah lost two of three games in that tourney when the Gatlinburg episode exploded and became a mind-numbing national story.
When the plug was finally pulled on the Owls’ season, they were 3-12 and had lost eight of their last nine games.
Tuesday was their first game since the early stages of the dark, embarrassing, painful stretch that has yet to reach a complete resolution in the courts.
It has been 10 months and 24 days since last lacing up their sneakers.
Or, 47 weeks.
Or, 28,425,600 seconds
Or, 473,760 minutes.
Or, 7,896 hours.
“There is more than basketball involved here in the big picture right now,” said Williams, who coached his first game in 13 years since leaving the sideline to become an administrator in Northwest Georgia.
“This is a unique circumstance,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, basketball is certainly a big piece of what’s going on and these kids deserve the best we have to offer in terms of coaching them. I know this program, this school and community have been hurting over things I don’t want to go into detail about, and it’s not my place to. We’re not passing judgment here; we’re moving forward and want to be a positive part to a positive change.”
Williams, 55, who coached at LaFayette and Northwest Whitfield high schools in Georgia, is assisted by Theanthony Haymon, Kerry Murray and Donel Cochran.
When the final horn sounded Tuesday, it was obvious there’s a long, hard road ahead if the Owls are going to reclaim their basketball reputation as one of the best programs in the greater Chattanooga area, perfectly capable of competing against the best Tennessee has to offer.
“I was very proud of their effort tonight,” said Williams, who was hired to take over the team in late July. “It was great being out there again, but early on our execution was not so great. I take responsibility for that; that’s coaching. They had a chance to roll over and didn’t.”
East Ridge coach Jon Goddard was happy that the hardwood series with Ooltewah was being renewed by a nice crowd.
“It’s always a good rivalry game for us, even though they’re a Triple A school and we’re Double-A,” he said. “We’ve always had good crowds and like any Hamilton County schools, the players know each other and it’s always fun to play Ooltewah.”
Goddard and Williams have been friends since their sons played on the same elite baseball team.
“Coach Williams has good assistants and they’ll get that program back where they want it because Ooltewah is never at a loss for talent and athleticism. It won’t be long before you start hearing about Ooltewah being back where they should be, and that’s on top.”
While the players have missed being in the heat of competition, the itch of being away from coaching led Williams back to the sideline.
“I’ve been away from coaching for quite a while,” said Williams, who coached his first basketball game for LaFayette (Ga.) High School in 1992 at the age of 29, “but I’ve been around kids and the sport; I just haven’t been coaching. I think the game is ever-evolving at all levels, but the fundamentals of the game and fundamentals of running a program do not change.
“You can do things in a lot of different ways, but as long as everybody are pulling in the same direction there are a lot of ways to get things done. Three of our four coaches attended Ooltewah; my wife and all three kids went to school at Ooltewah. Coach Murray played here. Coach Cochran played here. Coach Haymon lives in this community.”
“The last thing we told our kids before they took the floor was to make sure they had fun. This is all about them. We all know they’ve missed basketball and have been without something that means an awful lot to them. We’ve all been very busy getting to this point and, for me, it’s still exciting, but I’m just a small piece of what’s going on. I like to say I’m a tadpole in a big pond of things.”
On Tuesday, Marquis Hinton, just four days removed from the end of football season, got the Pioneers off and running by scoring nine of the team’s 18 first-quarter points.
The Owls managed just three points, all by McReynolds – he scored eight first-half points, including 6 of 7 free throws.
East Ridge had a 21-11 halftime advantage.
Ooltewah trimmed its deficit to 32-21 in the third period and was still within 11 after Morgan’s free throw with 5:42 left.
East Ridge went on an 8-0 run – Dkobe Williams scored the last six points, his only points of the game – and the Pioneers had a 52-33 lead with 3:31 remaining. The closest the Owls came after that was 12 points.
“I decided what the heck, we’ll throw our football players in there and see how they respond,” Goddard said. “Obviously, Hinton came alive on both offense and defense. The game was physical, so we needed the football guys in there. That’s my favorite kind of game when it’s basically a fight.”
But, again, Williams has looked at Tuesday’s opener in a big-picture sort of way, especially after the program was dragged through the mud for months.
“All these kids know what this program is about,” the coach said. “They certainly know that we’re going to be under a microscope for at least a while. That’s just a fact. We expect to have a program made up of kids with good character, and that’s what we’ve seen so far. I’m not sure all of them took for granted this (the return of boys basketball) would happen.
“We’ve basically asked three things from them: we want them to behave on and off the floor, in fact, we demand that. We ask them to practice hard every day and play hard in every game. I’ve always asked that of my players. Truthfully, if the kids don’t do what’s expected of them, they won’t be in the program very long, and they understand that. And we expect more from our seniors in terms of leadership. If anyone gets in trouble, they’re in trouble.”
From Tuesday’s first game to tournament time, Williams and his staff want to see steady on-court improvement.
“The key in basketball is how good you are at tournament time. If our kids aren’t playing better and if we, as coaches, aren’t coaching better by that time it’s going to be an issue.
“I do think I’m here for a reason. It’s not a coincidence. The jobs I’ve held in the past have prepared me for this one. Tonight was a big deal, but it’s just one game. It’s one step in the process, a small measuring stick of where we are. I’ve got good young men and basketball is a game in which you hopefully get better every day and that’s our goal.”
The Owls can confidently say, most observers would say, they knocked off some of that rust that has piled up over the past 10-plus months.
And, they can scream from the top of White Oak Mountain if they so desire that, yep, the Owls are back.
Before the Owls took the floor, the Lady Owls’ Courtney Swafford battled East Ridge’s Jayla Stone the entire game. Stone finished with 31 points, Swafford tossed in 25 and the Lady Owls won 52-36.
Boys Game
Ooltewah 3 8 17 14 – 42
East Ridge 18 10 12 17 – 57
Ooltewah (42) – Dalzon 8, Terer McReynolds 14, Tucker 3, Kendricks 8, Braden, Tory Morgan 10, Gladoren, Ju. Walker, Ja. Walker, Howard, Henry.
East Ridge (57) – Deuanta Johnson 10, Marquis Hinton 17, Mathis 2, Simmons 2, Williams 6, Harvey 2, Elijah Garmany 18.
3-Point Goals – Ooltewah 1 (Kendricks 1), East Ridge 7 (Garmany 4, Hinton 3).
Girls Game
Ooltewah 13 8 17 14 – 52
East Ridge 11 8 15 2 – 36
Ooltewah (52) – Cline 9, Courtney Swafford 25, Smith 3, Kilgore, Wardlaw 5, Mills 3, Collak 2, Lemon 3, Patterson 2.
East Ridge (36) – Jayla Stone 31, Jordan 4, Adams 1, Hill, Murphy, Toney, Willbanks, Dozier, Kendrick
3-Point Goals – Ooltewah 3 (Cline 1, Smith 1, Lemon 1), East Ridge 6 (Stone 5, Jordan 1).
(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and on Twitter @larryfleming44)