Boys State: In Three Short Years English Has ‘Canes In State Tourney

(The second of two articles)

When Rodney English played professional basketball in China, there were three people that spoke the English language: Rodney, Kimberly, his wife, and one other player. A Chinese translator was assigned to the group.

Kimberly’s patience was wearing thin though. She was basically just sitting around, unable to work without a work visa and they were hard to come by.

“There was no way we could get a visa for her to work,” Rodney English says. “And she was tired of sitting around and ready to go back home. There was no way I wanted to play in China without her there with me.”

Once again, English received some sage advice from his mother, Dell.

“Being apart,” English recalls her saying, “is no way to start a marriage that you want to last when one is abroad and the other is here (America) doing something else.”

So the Englishes left basketball in China behind and returned to the United States and Johnson City and Rodney finished his graduate degree in the fall. In January, Rodney English got his first coaching job at University School, a private school located on the ETSU campus. The athletic teams’ nickname is Jr. Bucs.

The Librarian and the coach

In addition to being the JV and middle school head coach and varsity assistant with the Jr. Bucs, English was also the hired as a school librarian. While at University School for two years, English had a graduate assistantship with the ETSU alumni office. A vice president at the school had office space in the alumni office and his wife was a superintendent of a small school system in McIntosh County in Georgia.

The VP liked English’s work with University School and when the McIntosh County High School basketball coach got in “some kind of trouble,” and while the VP’s wife was in Johnson City – stay with us here – visiting her husband she found English’s office.

“It turned out to be an interview,” English said.

The next thing English knew he and Kimberly were headed to Darien, Georgia, a coastal town about 50 miles south of Savannah with a population of less than 2,000, according to the latest census to check out the high school basketball program.

English took the job, but decided to live in Brunswick. He drove to Darien to teach and coach; Kimberly drove to Savannah to work as a speech therapist.

English stayed at McIntosh for two years. His first team won 10 games. The following year he won 28 games and lost in the Elite Eight of the Class 2A state tournament. That turnaround in almost the same time span would be repeated several years later at East Hamilton School in Tennessee.

English soon began to take calls from larger schools in the Savannah area about his possibly leaving McIntosh for coaching jobs at larger schools. Kimberly was pregnant with the couple’s first child, Hillary. English became a finalist for the job at Beech High School. “I walked down the hallways at Beech and all the kids were bigger than me,” English said. “I really wanted that job.”

Kimberly wanted out of South Georgia though. As it turned out, ETSU women’s basketball coach Karen Kemp, who hails from Chatsworth, Georgia, had an opening on her staff at the same time.

Kimberly English put her foot down: the only she was interested in her husband taking was back in eastern Tennessee.

Rodney took the ETSU job.

In time, Rodney got an assistant’s job at UT-Chattanooga but became weary from all the travel associated with coaching at the college level. So, English got a job offer at Gordon Central High School in Calhoun, Georgia.

He left Gordon Central when it was clearly “time for me to go” and English told Kimberly he would “get a job within a week.” He applied for several jobs in the Hamilton County school system and received “offers” from four or five schools.

One of those offers came from East Hamilton, where Gail Chuy was and remains the school’s principal. Chuy talked to English about an assistant’s position, but that was non-starter. “I didn’t want to be anyone’s assistant,” English say. “I had done that. I told her I would sit out a year from coaching and see what happens.”

Chuy hired English solely as a special education teacher.

Within a year, Chuy dismissed boys’ coach Michael Stone after four seasons and needed a new head coach. She opened the application process and English was the first person to apply. Chuy, however, had to go through the hiring process, according to school system guidelines.

“Every time she would say something to me about the job, I’d tell her, ‘I don’t know why you’re wasting your time with these interviews because you’ve already got the best person for the job right here,” English recalled.

In his year at East Hamilton in a teaching role, English watched every middle school basketball game and every varsity home game and as many close away games as possible.

An obvious question to English was: Did current coaches think he was looking over their shoulders to later give Chuy an assessment of the program?

“A few said just that,” English said. “But I wasn’t doing that. I never said anything to anyone, I just watched. I could see how they could ask that question, but if someone asked me I would tell them the same thing.”

Did Stone ever question English’s motives?

“Michael Stone and I never had a conversation,” English said. “Absolutely, never.”

Chuy had this to say: “Rodney also went to football games, soccer games, to volleyball games because his daughter was playing in middle school at the time, so it wasn’t unusual to see him at basketball games.”

The principal, whose athletic background includes basketball at Red Bank High School under legendary coach Hutch Lewis, said she had “five or six serious applicants” for her coaching vacancy. A committee trimmed the original list and English was one of the two finalists.

A Unanimous Pick At East Hamilton

“It could have gone either way,” she said in an interview last week. “But coach English had the experience and that was important to us. The other finalist was younger, but we needed to jump-start our program.”

The principal said the committee was unanimous in choosing English.  

After hiring English, Chuy had a one-on-one meeting with the new coach and put forth her expectations for the boys’ program.

“I told him that I wanted a program at East Hamilton we could be proud of; I wanted kids to do well in basketball and more importantly I wanted him to help develop those kids into young men,” she said. “And I told him I wanted to win, after all I’m competitive as well. That was our conversation.”

In five seasons under Stone, the Hurricanes put up records of 3-21, 10-18, 7-16, 17-10 and 6-21, according to the coacht.com website. The first four years saw the ‘Canes compete in Class 2A, which has long been dominated by Brainerd and Tyner high schools. Stone’s final year in 2013-14 was East Hamilton’s first in Class 3A, the state’s largest classification for basketball.

English felt East Hamilton was sitting on a “gold mine of talent” and couldn’t wait to get started, but it wasn’t until this season the ’Canes won their first district tournament game after seven one-and-done appearances. And English was the runner-up to Cleveland’s Jason McCowan in balloting for District 5-3A Coach of the Year honors.

East Hamilton, the No. 2 seed behind Cleveland, ended the postseason drought with a victory with a semifinal win over Bradley Central. Cleveland routed the ‘Canes by 30 points in the title game 18 days days after East Hamilton handed the Blue Raiders their lone league loss (78-77) on two Cam Montgomery free throws with 2.2 seconds left.

As the season of “firsts” continued, East Hamilton notched three straight Region 3-3A wins, including an impressive 63-57 victory over a senior-laden Walker Valley for the championship. The ’Canes followed up with a stunning 72-68 sectional win against perennial title contender Blackman, which had played in the previous five state tournaments.

That game drew a near capacity crowd in the 1,732-seat East Hamilton gymnasium and the “Cane Crazies,” a raucous student-body cheering section was a strong benefit to their team’s success.

English’s magnetic personality that led to his two-year stint with the crowd-pleasing and ever popular Harlem Globetrotters has fueled the student’s rejuvenated interest in his basketball team.

As Chuy points out, winning a lot of basketball games is a factor as well.

“The support from our student body is a big thing,” she said. “It has been difficult to establish a good, positive culture here because when we opened we had kids coming from all over and they brought different traditions from a lot of schools. It’s gratifying to see what has happened.

“And here’s the thing for me. On Tuesday they acted appropriately and weren’t ugly.”

That student support for the Hurricanes didn’t stop with the Blackman game.

Student Support At A ‘Crazy’ Level

Chuy said as of Friday between 450 and 500 students had requested permission slips to attend the state tournament game on Wednesday in Murfreesboro when East Hamilton plays defending state champion Memphis East at 1:15 p.m. CDT at Middle Tennessee State University. At least six busses have been reserved to accommodate the students.

“It’s awesome,” English said. “That’s a testament to our administration being on board and to my basketball players because they’re out there doing stuff with other kids in school and that’s how you grow as a program. And what can you say about the “Crazies” the other night.

“There’s a little boy, a junior, Chuck Bronson, who has been at every single thing we’ve done. When the Crazies started growing they were growing around Chuck. I’ve given him the same T-shirt my players have. Every time I see him I give him a high-five and thank him. And he says, ‘No, it’s my pleasure to be there.’ That makes me feel great.”

Students, not to mention the school’s basketball players from middle school to the varsity’s two seniors, Noah Fager and Matthew Wingard, can’t help but love what English has done for them and the program in three short years that have seen the team go from a 14-16 record to 19-12 last year and 25-10 heading to Murfreesboro.

Fager was a freshman during Stone’s final season.

“I was on the JV team,” he says, “and didn’t feel like I even knew coach Stone because there was no interaction between the JV and varsity teams. When coach English got here everything came together really fast. Coach English has incorporated everyone from the varsity down to the middle school teams and everybody knows the same system. No one is being left out.”

Fager also knows he’s now a smarter basketball player.

Players' Basketball IQ On The Rise

“My basketball IQ has gone up a bunch,” he said. “I knew the difference between good shots and bad shots and what was good for the team and what’s bad for the team. He defined my role with the team and that helped make me a smarter player.”

Ask junior DaVae Hughley about his first impression of English and without hesitation he says, “He wants to win. I was probably the first person he talked to when he was hired here. Me and the other juniors have been close since the eighth-grade and we’ve been clicking ever since coach English started.”

Hughley is, like English was during his playing career, a 6-foot-4 forward. The biggest single factor in how English has been able to improve Hughley’s play is making him more aggressive on the floor.

“I was kind of passive my first two years on varsity,” Hughley admitted. “Wasn’t aggressive at all. But when he tells me to get a bucket or go get a rebound it’s now second-nature because I have to play aggressive to help the team. He stays on me about that.”

Hurricane players know some of the English’s playing history, but it’s not something that comes up often in conversations. Players understand the experience English gained from that playing time and the way he forwards his comprehension of the Xs and Os and this crop of current players.

“When he’s coaching us it’s really obvious that he knows what he’s talking about,” junior guard Vandrele Wilson said. “He has 100 percent confidence in everything he does. He believes it because he’s done it before.”

Montgomery, a 5-9 sophomore guard, has thrived at East Hamilton after transferring from Ooltewah before the 2016-17 school year and said English is a hard-working guy and expects “the best from all his players.”

“I respect him a lot for helping me gain more basketball knowledge,” Montgomery said. “Coach talking to me about things, some that may not involve basketball at all, helps a lot too. I’m confident that he’s going to take me from being a good player to being a great player.”

Junior point guard Justin Dozier, who along with Fager and Hughley earned All-District 5-3A honors, likes what he sees from English on and off the court.

“Since he’s been here coach English has been good to me and he’s like another father figure in my life,” Dozier said. “He’s a good coach and pushes us hard and expects a lot from us on the court and in the classroom. Coach has a nice personality and is a fun guy, a cool guy to be with.”

Dozier remembers clearly what English told his team three years ago, a lot of which are coming true this season.

“He told us in three years we would go to state,” Dozier said. “After last year I started thinking that we had a chance for state too. The time he was a player I’m sure helped him become a good coach and he knows all the skill levels of the game. He knows what he’s talking about and we listen.”

(Contact Larry Fleming at larryfleming44@gmail.com and on Twitter @larryfleming44)