Menu
Cape Central boy's basketball coach, Drew Church, speaks to the Tigers before the start of their eventual 68-62 loss to the St. Mary's Dragons in the Class 4 state quarterfinals last season at Jefferson College in Hillsboro.
Good Sports: Drew Church is a basketball lifer nurturing a culture at Cape Central
Cape Central boy's basketball coach, Drew Church, speaks to Tiger player Caleb Oswald after he fouled out during the Tigers' 68-62 loss to the St. Mary's Dragons in the Class 4 state quarterfinals last season at Jefferson College in Hillsboro.
Jacob Wiegand ~ Southeast Missourian
Good Sports is a weekly feature appearing in the Southeast Missourian and online at Semoball.com. It profiles the life of a person connected to sports and allows readers the opportunity to know the people who are impacting athletics throughout Southeast Missouri in a deeper way. Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Today: Drew Church, 40, varsity boys basketball coach, Cape Girardeau Central, since 2006. In 2018, he took on additional duties as a high school assistant principal. Central is Church’s first head coaching job and he has had notable success, leading the Tigers to four Class 4 District 1 titles — most recently last season — and four second-place finishes in 14 seasons at the helm. Central’s last losing campaign during his tenure was more than a decade ago — in 2008.
Central athletic director Tyson Moyers said of Church:
“Drew’s work ethic is second to none. He holds his student-athletes to a very high level both on and off the court. The way his student-athletes conduct themselves not only in school but outside of school is a testament to his leadership.”
Jeff Long: On your office wall are words familiar to any viewer of the TV series “Friday Night Lights,” about a coach and his team.
Drew Church: We repeat them before every game: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” I believe in those words.
JL: Your undefeated team plays Kennett today in a SEMO Conference Tournament semifinal.
DC: Yes, and we were horrible in the opening game.
JL: You beat Poplar Bluff, 58-47.
DC: And we had 21 turnovers. Sloppy.
JL: What is your offensive philosophy?
DC: I believe in controlling the tempo of the game, dictating it, either fast or slow. Ball control. And I want 25 to 30 points in transition every time we play.
JL: Is there a coach out there you admire, that you model yourself after?
DC: Matt Painter at Purdue. He fields physically tough teams. His men are good defensively and guard well.
JL: You learned the game literally on your father’s knee.
DC: My dad, Mike Church, was an assistant coach at Eastern Illinois University for over 25 years. I used to sneak into the university gym late at night to shoot hoops — no air conditioning. Dad is a volunteer coach with me now. My mom, Phoebe Church, was the chair of the physical education department at EIU. I’ve always been around sports.
JL: You played the game, of course.
DC: Played point guard in high school in Charleston, Illinois, where EIU is. Same at the University of Evansville. Graduated in 2001. I was on the last Evansville team to play in the NCAA Tournament (1999). We had an at-large bid. I wasn’t a starter but got a lot of minutes. The school had a 20-year recognition for us earlier this year but I couldn’t go because of coaching.
JL: Take us from college graduation to your current job.
DC: I spent a year as an assistant at Bethel College in McKenzie, Tennessee, an NAIA school. Had a chance to come to Cape in 2002 and assist SEMO Coach Gary Garner for two years. While on his staff, I worked on my master’s degree.
JL: You were pointed toward college coaching (as a career).
DC: I was. But it’s hard to be recruiting and on the road with a young family. Plus, job security is difficult at the college level.
JL: High school was the path.
JL: It’s the right one for me. I took a job in Jackson for a while. I taught physical education and coached middle school and junior varsity.
JL: How did coming to Central happen?
DC: The AD at the time, Mark Ruark, reached out when the Tigers' job came open.
JL: When I asked you about coaching basketball, one of the first words you used was “grind.”
DC: It is a grind. It’s the longest sport (in terms of a season). Fortunately, I have the help of my dad and assistants Jeff Beck and Kyle Keith. You can't have a successful program without great coaches who are committed and who work relentlessly.
JL: What does basketball teach a young man or woman?
DC: Sports, in general, teach teamwork, how to prepare — not only for a game but for life, and how to react to adversity. Something bad is (eventually) going to happen.
JL: Is there a “Church culture” at Central?
DC: I want an atmosphere where the kids work extremely hard and where they treat people the right way. Not everyone can sign on to that and I had to remove five or six players from the team my first year.
JL: And you didn’t have success for a while.
DC: We struggled for three years, but the administration backed me up. (Former principal) Mike Cowan had my back. We started to see success in year four. I’ll say this — no one we face will play harder or be tougher (than us). We’ve got good, high-character kids.
JL: What’s the result of the culture you’ve established?
DC: If players know you care, you can get on them. If you invest in them, they’ll run through a wall for you. We actually have a situation now where our older kids train and mentor the younger ones.
JL: Recently you became an assistant principal. Is there much crossover with coaching?
DC: Coaching prepares you for administration. We’ve got a diverse enrollment here and I get to interact with so many more students than if I stuck to just coaching and teaching phys ed. Just like what we find on the court, we deal with student behavior. We’re preparing teens for life here. To be humble, which is so rare in society. To give credit to others. I have rules and expectations for my team: compliment others, compliment the other team.
JL: Isn’t your wife, (the former Lindsey Meyr) a former athlete?
DC: And a good one. She ran track and played softball. We have two kids, a girl and a boy — Kate is 10 and Ryland is 5.