| 5/8/2004 8:01:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| “I hope to instill in the girls a sense of pride that they can win. I don’t believe in moral victories and we may not win every game, but I believe you can always get better.”
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New Shawe Girls basketball head coach John Kalb
(above)
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Ripley’s Kalb takes on Shawe ‘challenge’
By: Mark Campbell
Courier Sports Editor
No lengthy introductions were necessary at Hilary Meny Gymnasium — or anywhere else in the Ohio River Valley Conference for that matter — when Shawe introduced John Kalb as its new girls varsity basketball coach.
Friday the Hilltoppers turned to the longtime educator and coach in the South Ripley school system — a man who just happened to get his start in teaching and coaching at Shawe Memorial — to take over the reigns of the Lady Hilltoppers.
A 35-year veteran teacher and coach who got his start at Shawe in 1969 before spending the last 25 years at South Ripley, Kalb gladly accepted the challenge to return to the small hilltop school where his career and life as an educator and coach began.
“When I saw the job opening at Shawe I was really interested in it. I’ve been out of coaching the last couple of years and I’ve really missed it,” Kalb said Friday after his introduction as the new Lady Hilltoppers coach. “It gets in your blood and it’s still there.”
“Throughout the process we felt like John was the best fit as to what we’re looking for in a coach,” said Shawe principal Jerry Bomholt, a veteran boys varsity basketball coach himself. “We hope this is the beginning of a long and storied tenure.”
Shawe athletic director Scott Knapp said Kalb brings experience, wisdom and enthusiasm to the program — the kind of qualities that can turn a program around.
“I’m impressed with his coaching background and all that he’s done in the past,” said Knapp. “When we interviewed him we realized he’s really up to the challenge. This is a man who can turn things around and that’s what we’re looking for.
“I’ve got some of the players in class and they’re all interested in who’s going to be their next coach,” said Knapp. “They’re all excited and they’re all looking forward to the change.”
Kalb is just as excited to get back into coaching — especially basketball. In his 35 years as an educator, Kalb has coached about every varsity sport imaginable and a number of junior high and reserve teams. He most recently coached cross country and track at South Ripley, but he served as the girls varsity basketball coach just seven years ago and has been an official IHSAA cross country starter the past few years.
But over the last couple of years, Kalb’s only calling to the hardwoods has been as the public address announcer at both the boys and girls varsity games at South Ripley. But while working those games, he began feeling the call of the coaching bench.
Kalb said his wife, Marcia — a teacher at Madison’s E.O. Muncie Elementary — noticed the same thing and began encouraging him to answer that calling.
“In the beginning my wife told me, ‘I’d hate for you not to coach again’ because she knows I love coaching so much,” said Kalb. “Then after I talked to them about the Shawe job she told me: ‘Take it! Please take it!’”
The decision is a little reminiscent of how Kalb got into teaching and coaching in the first place.
As a 1965 graduate of Shawe, Kalb originally headed off to St. Minor College intent on becoming a priest. But that calling got derailed by teaching and coaching when Kalb accepted a brief teaching job at Shawe in 1969 that turned into a 10-year stint with the school before he headed off to Versailles.
“I graduated from Shawe and I taught and coached at Shawe so part of that went into my decision,” said Kalb. “I’ve never been one to back down from a challenge and this is going to be a challenge.”
That challenge could be formidable as Kalb takes over a Shawe program that was 8-82 under its previous coach Dwight Inskeep and has won no more than seven games in any season since 1998-99.
“But you’ve got an administration that supports the program,” Kalb noted. “I know they are 100 percent behind getting the girls back to respectability ... and when you put all that together this is a tremendous opportunity I believe.”
Kalb said the job must begin with a foundation of hard work, determination, spirit and enthusiasm. “I know they are all clichés, but that’s what it is. That’s what it takes,” Kalb said.
“We’ve got to get back to the basics. We’ll spend a lot of time on fundamentals — working on fundamentals and building things from the beginning,” said Kalb. “I hope to instill in the girls a sense of pride that they can win. I don’t believe in moral victories and we may not win every game, but I believe you can always get better.”
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