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Good Sports: Oran alum proves you can indeed go home again
Oran girl's basketball coach Ethan Evans talks with his team during an early time-out at the recent First State Community Bank Holiday Classic tournament at the Show Me Center.
Tyler Graef ~ 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: Ethan Evans, 40, head girls basketball coach, Oran High School. In his eighth season at the helm of the Eagles program, his squad finished fourth in the state in the 2016-17 season. He has posted 20-plus win campaigns in the last four seasons and his overall record in Oran is 143-53 (.730).
JL: The country is talking about impeachment this Christmas. You teach government at Oran High School. An interesting time to tackle that subject.
EE: I teach government, world history, current events, geography. My undergrad degree is in geography. You have to be careful. This is a conservative place and I don’t want to offend anybody. We look at what the Founding Fathers said for these times — about our system of checks and balances.
JL: You’re an Oran alum.
EE: Yes, I graduated here in 1998, went to Southeast for two years and finished at MIzzou. I also have a master’s degree from William Woods in administration. Oran has a lot of alums who teach here. Roots are deep in this community. Joe Shoemaker (longtime boys basketball coach and current high school principal) was a senior here when I was in 7th grade. My dad owned the school buses. And now I drive the bus to get the girls to their games.
JL: Tell us about your path to get back to Oran.
EE: I went to Kingston in Washington County and taught for two years. I was the boys varsity basketball coach and wasn’t ready for the job. We weren’t very good. Next came five years at Woodland where I served as boys junior high coach and high school assistant. I liked it at Woodland but then Oran came open and I applied. Mitch Wood, the Oran superintendent at the time, was my old coach.
JL: Did you want to coach girls basketball?
EE: The girls job was open and honestly (Oran) was my first experience coaching girls.
JL: You’ve coached both. How is the coaching experience different with the genders?
EE: You can get in the face of boys more easily. Girls mostly do not respond to direct confrontation. I’m more likely to say now, “Hey, you need to do this better.” I had to back off a bit in coaching girls. Girls listen better, I think. They’ll at least try to follow what I tell them. Boys are a little more headstrong. I’ve got three kids myself — two boys and a girl. My daughter doesn’t want to let me down. My sons are not quite as concerned.
JL: Your kids are nine years of age.
EE: Yes, they’re triplets. Delia plays this sport and she’ll play for me someday. Ben plays hoops too and I’ve coached him in baseball. Mike is my historian. All three are academically at the top of their class.
JL: Oran is a Class 2 school in a community of about 1,300 people. Yet you’ve had repeated success in your program. How do you explain it?
EE: The district is larger than just the town but yes, we’re a small school. Kids start playing in the first grade here. I start coaching them in sixth grade and by the time I get them, I’m not having to teach them the fundamentals of basketball — you know, you stand here, you stand there. That’s an advantage. Also, most of the girl players who go to Guardian Angel (the K-8 parochial school just up the street) end up here in the public school in Oran. In fact, I’ve got three of them in the program now. And I can’t say enough about the community. We’ve got a good thing going in Oran.
JL: You’ve also had some fine players.
EE: We’re talented right down through the 8th grade. Success does attract success because girls know about our wins. I’ve got some really good players now. Senior Kaylee Payne, for instance, is our team leader. She is very good defensively — and is a phenomenal athlete. Assists, steals, rebounding. She’s headed to Southeast to play softball. Katie Webb, a junior, gives us a lot of points and is strong in the post. (Both Payne and Webb were named to the recent Holiday Classic All-Tournament team.)
JL: Your first year at Oran was 2012-2013 and is your only losing record.
EE: We started seeing success in year two. We were blessed with speed and good shooters. By year three, we started five forwards and were really good defensively.
JL: And then came Leah Cauble in the 2015-16 season.
EE: Our run of 20-win seasons started with her. Just a prolific scorer. Leah spent a lot of time in the gym improving. She’s at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee now. Exciting basketball during Leah’s time. Up tempo, run and gun, getting the ball down and back. We had a pair of seniors who were instrumental to success too — Ashlyn McIntosh and Tatum May.
JL: Do you prefer to play fast — always in transition?
EE: In a perfect world, I’d prefer to play running. We do that when we can but it all pivots on the personnel you’ve got. I like to press but it all depends. Sometimes we speed it up but sometimes we slow it down with a half-court set.
JL: And the pinnacle for Oran girls basketball was the 2016-17 season.
EE: So far, yes. We went to the final four. The boys won the Class 2 state title that same season so it was a great year all-around for Oran.
JL: You’re pretty soft-spoken in conversation but when you’re on the sideline, you’re pretty vocal. You sure know you’re around.
EE: When I need to speak up, I do. If I don’t need to yell, I don’t.
JL: Do you have mentors?
EE: I’d have to say the late Dean Smith (of North Carolina Tarheel fame). He used to say, “Play hard, play smart, play together.” I also admire the late John Wooden (UCLA), a brilliant basketball mind.
JL: Do you have some rituals with your team?
EE: We do a quote of the day. We’ve used, for instance, “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” I also like the acronym TEAM — Together Everyone Achieves More.
JL: What is on the horizon for Coach Ethan Evans?
EE: I take it day-by-day. I’m happy here. There is unbelievable community support (for basketball) in Oran.