Sometimes big problems are solved so easily, so smoothly, that bystanders are left wondering how it all came together. This seems to be the case with the hiring of Russellville’s new girls basketball coach.
Not long before time for a new school year to begin, Dedra Adler, who had coached the Lady Panthers for eight years and had worked with them this summer in preparation for a new season, resigned and accepted a teaching position at her alma mater, Logan County High School.
RHS officials needed another basketball coach in a hurry. Most coaching searches were long over and positions filled. The school also needed a teacher for the classes Adler would have been teaching. Special certification is needed to teach those classes. It was the only teaching position available at the school.
Chances of finding an experienced coach who could teach those classes in a short time span were minimal.
And then along came Justin McClellan, an experienced coach with the necessary certification, looking for a coaching job at a Kentucky high school.
It appears to be a match made in Basketball Heaven.
McClellan played his high school basketball at Cookeville High School in Tennessee and collegiately at East Tennessee State University. He was a redshirt freshman on the Buccaneers team which won the Southern Conference Championship and beat the University of Arizona in the first round of the 1992 NCAA Tournament before losing narrowly to the famed Chris Webber-Jalen Rose-Juwan Howard-Jimmy King-Ray Jackson Fab Five of Michigan. He has an impressive ring to commemorate that season, and four years later he received the Coach’s Award in his senior year of 1996.
He spent six years in the military, earning the Army Achievement Medal in 2004 and being promoted to sergeant in the Tennessee National Guard in 2007. Part of that service involved a tour of duty in Iraq.
McClellan’s first coaching experience came as assistant women’s basketball coach at Fisk University in Nashville. When his military career ended, he went back to college coaching as assistant men’s coach at Trevecca Nazarene, also in Nashville. He coached boys at Northwest High School in Clarksville the next three years, the last as head coach. Among the players his team faced regularly was Alex Poythress, now a University of Kentucky Wildcat.
He told those gathered at a press conference Monday that he became interested in coaching in Kentucky because he believes that coaches are treated better in the Bluegrass State and because of the state’s retirement system. He said former Franklin-Simpson and Austin Peay basketball standout Jermaine Savage, now a state policeman, pointed him toward this area.
At the press conference introducing him, Athletic Director Nathan Thompson said the committee which chose him consisted of Principal Kim McDaniel, faculty members Susannah Nelson and Tracy Naylor, parent Timmy Hampton. and Thompson himself.
“It was late in the game about getting a coaching job this year, but the position fell open just at the right time,” McClellan said.
McDaniel told The LoJo: “We are very fortunate to have found someone for this position of his caliber in such a short amount of time. His teaching record and accomplishments are even stronger than his coaching abilities, according to our sources. RHS has truly found a good man with a strong fortitude and high integrity to impart upon our students on and off the court!"
McClellan showed that he hasn’t had time to learn much about the school, the team or Kentucky basketball since accepting the position. He asked questions about how the setup works to select just one state champion instead of several in classifications as is the case in Tennessee. He didn’t know who the other teams are in the Lady Panthers’ district or the size of the schools. He wasn’t aware that middle schoolers can play up in high school. He had not yet learned anything about the players he has returning, including starters Khalia Hampton, Shea Hampton and Davonna Sydnor.
But he said he’s willing to work, that he likes to run and press but is willing to adapt to his personnel, and that academics and discipline are more important than athletics to him. If a player is failing, she’s no longer on the team, he said.
Justin McClellan made a good impression on those attending the introduction of a new era in RHS girls basketball. No doubt, he will know much more what RHS basketball is about by the time roundballs start bouncing in October.