By Shannon Fagan, WEIS Sports Director

SAND ROCK – If John Blackwell ever wanted to be a basketball recruiter, he sure would have a lot of selling points promoting the two programs he’s coached.

In 23 years as a head coach, there were only three seasons his teams didn’t make the postseason. Two of those were his first year as a girls coach at Glencoe and the first year he was head boys coach at Sand Rock. He averaged 20.4 wins per year, winning a total of 470 games in his head coaching career.

But that’s not all.

Every girl or boy Blackwell coached in 23 years who played at least two years for him either won an area championship, a county championship, or they went to the Northeast Regional Tournament in Jacksonville. Many of them got to do all three.

“That was done not chasing talent. That was done not recruiting from other schools. We just worked hard to keep the kids in the program,” Blackwell said. “We’re in a time now where kids are jumping schools just like college and the transfer portal. I never had a varsity player to leave my program to go play at another school.

“When you start investing in them in third, fourth and fifth grade, and you can keep them until they’re seniors, it means something. It’s more than just a sport at a school. It’s an investment.”

The all-time winningest basketball in100 years of basketball at Glencoe and the man who guided the Sand Rock boys to their first Final Four appearance since 2011 this past season recently made his retirement decision official.

Blackwell had announced his intentions to step away from coaching following his last game back on Feb. 27 in the press conference following the Wildcats’ 73-63 loss to eventual Class 2A state champion Aliceville in Birmingham. The Wildcats finished the season at 22-11.

On Tuesday afternoon, WEIS Sports Director Shannon Fagan sat down for a question-and-answer session with Blackwell. The two discussed reflections on his career and what his future holds.

Q: You played for hall of fame coach L.D. Dobbins at Collinsville. When you arrived at Glencoe, you had another hall of famer to learn from in Donny Pruitt at Glencoe. What have those two men meant to your coaching career?

A: “Going back to Coach Dobbins, I think everything fundamental-wise that I tried to coach over the years I got from him, not that Coach Pruitt wasn’t a good fundamental coach. It was just different eras from the early 80s to the mid-90s. A lot of advice when I got hired I talked to Coach Dobbins. He gave me some good advice. He always said ‘Coach, fundamentals will never leave you.’ He had a lot of players that went on to be coaches. I’ve talked to several others and they said he gave them the same advice. Always coach fundamentals. Always try to start with the basic. Don’t try to get too fancy. Just coach the basics and that will get you there.

“Coach Pruitt did that also, but he taught me how to scout. He taught me how to put a game plan together. I think Coach Dobbins was more ‘Let’s worry about us.’ Coach Pruitt was more along the lines of ‘I’m going to be fundamentally sound, but I also want to know what the other team is going to do. He taught me a lot about how to scout teams and do that. I pulled a little bit from both of them. Hopefully that helped me and some of the success we’ve had.”

Q: How much has the game changed since you were player?

A: “Since I was a player, a lot. Coach Dobbins was one of those guys where you walked the ball up the floor. You ran a set play. He called the play every trip when you crossed half-court. I was a point guard in high school. When you crossed half-court and you weren’t being pressed, you looked over and he called a play. You ran that play exactly like he planned it. That game is gone. It’s more fast-paced. It’s like the NBA and college. It’s more of a shooter’s game now instead of a post play game.

“With Coach Dobbins, we always had a big man inside. He had to touch it every trip. Whether he shot it or not was depending on the play. Nowadays, a lot of times the big man is the 3-point shooter. You have 6-6, 6-7, 6-8 guys and tall girls outside shooting threes instead of posting up inside. The speed of the game has changed. The fundamentals have not. Defense has not. Offense has changed a lot. You’ve still got to play good defense to be successful.”

Q: I know Glencoe holds a special place in your heart. Under your guidance, the Lady Yellow Jackets won eight Etowah County titles, 10 area championships and made it to the Northeast Regional Tournament nine times. Your 2008-09 team reached the Final Four, and you finished with a 370-161 record in 18 seasons. What made you so successful during your years at Glencoe?

A: “I’ve thought a lot about that and I really don’t know if I have an answer. When I got hired there, I didn’t know I was going to be a coach. I went there to be a science teacher. Mr. Moe Smith, I don’t know if he saw something in me or he’d run out of options. I was told the job had been offered to multiple people already on staff. Everybody turned it down. Nobody had stayed a varsity girls coach at Glencoe for more than two years. Most were one and done. A lot of times it was football assistants or some other coach of another sport they would volunteer to take it over. He told me but he said ‘I’ll hire you, but I want you to coach girls basketball.’ I did that.

“I remember that first year during my first season on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, that whole year we (Blackwell and wife Kristi) tried to go on Saturdays and watch our youth girls, whether they were playing in the Gadsden Youth Center or church leagues or wherever. That’s what we did from day one. We really invested in our youth program. There was no certain youth league at that time. Gadsden City had a youth league. A lot of churches in Etowah County had leagues. One thing Kristy and I did was we spent every Saturday. I can remember on a Saturday, Valentine’s Day, we went and watched our sixth grade girls play. Morgan Talbot was a sixth grader at the time. She had a broken right arm. She played the whole game with a broken arm. She shot free throws left handed and was 9-of-10. I just remember her parents saying that motivated those girls seeing the varsity coach there on Valentine’s Day with his wife. I think investing in the youth league and working with the girls – and I never failed to do that. When I came here to Sand Rock I started doing the same thing. I just really got involved with the youth league and started investing in those kids. That’ll help build your program.”

Q: You took a job at Sand Rock in the summer of 2013 as a teacher and junior high boys basketball coach. You helped develop a lot of the guys on this year’s Final Four team. Did you ever think you’d be coaching them during their varsity years?

A: “I had no idea. I came up here not to be a coach at all. When I got here, they asked if I’d help do junior high, and I did.

“McKenna Ballenger, Maci Brown and my daughter (McKenzi), a lot of those girls I would carry down to Glencoe. Coach Gary Wells, his whole driveway was a basketball court. He was a fundamental specialist and a lot of our kids at Glencoe went there. I carried boys and girls in third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade. We would go down and work in his driveway. I’d carry them to go get ice cream or milkshakes afterwards. I didn’t come here to become a varsity coach, but I did end up seeing the fruit of that as a varsity coach.”

Q: Not too many coaches have the distinction of coaching both girls and boys. What are some of the differences between coaching them?

A: “The coach at Skyline right now (Ronnie McCarver), he’s one of the few who has coached a girls program at one school and a boys program at a different school. He and I are about the only two in Northeast Alabama who has carried a boys team and a girls team at two different schools to the Final Four.

“I don’t know if there’s a secret to it. I think it goes back to if kids know you love them and you care about them and they see you invest in them, they in turn are going to invest in what you’re doing as a coach. I think a lot of it is they knew I was sincere and I cared about them. I want to see them be successful. I didn’t just wait until they got to be varsity players. They saw me invest in them when they were in third, fourth, fifth and sixth grade. It’s not a one-year investment. It’s more like an eight, nine, 10-year investment.”

Q: I know you’ve coached countless players and you’re proud of all of them. What’s it mean to you to know that you played a part in developing them into the women and men they are today?

A: “That’s where I think a coach actually gets his rewards, seeing what happens to your players after they graduate high school. In my 23 years a varsity coach, I had 15 different assistants under me. Of those 15 assistants, eight of them played for me. Most of my assistants over the years were players who decided to go into education and wanted to become a coach. Of those eight that played under me, five of them went on to be coaches of a program. You hope you’ve done something that makes them want to stay in teaching and/or coaching and then see them be successful. The ones who didn’t stay in it, I look at a lot of them now and there’s nurses, there’s a doctor, there’s all different professions. I still hear from girls I coached 22, 23 years ago. They’re still call me every so often and say ‘Coach, me and my family have gone through a tough time of sickness’ or ‘I’ve lost a parent or a family member, and I want to thank you for what you taught me because these struggles in life I’m able to be successful through them with a lot of what I learned playing for you.’ That’s where you get your reward. It’s where I’ve gotten my reward anyway.”

Q: You’ve also coached with and against some of the state’s best head basketball coaches. How much does that mean to you?

A: “A lot. This year, the regional tournament was extremely important to me. I know he was the head coach on paper. He probably wasn’t the acting head coach, but I was 0-for my career against Carey Ellison at Pisgah. I was 0-for-5 against him at Jacksonville. Now I’m 1-5. He was in name the boys coach this year. I shook his hand and hugged him and told him ‘I finally got you in my last year.’ It means a lot.

“It’s nice to know you have those connections and you do get to coach against some of the best and see that your programs are hopefully considered as one of the best. If you’re coaching against them and you’re there on a regular basis, then your program has to be considered that also. That means a lot.”

Q: I know you would’ve loved to gone out a state champion, but can you imagine your career ending much better than it did this season?

A: “I can’t. I see coaches sometimes and players in professional sports hang on too long. They kind of leave with a tarnish by their name. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to leave when the time was right. I always wanted to leave a program better than I found it. I think I left Glencoe that way. When I resigned there, I had multiple coaches from other schools call and ask if I lost my mind. Some of the teams coming up were probably some of the best teams I would’ve ever had at Glencoe.

“When I left there with the program much better than when it was when I took it over. I also feel like I leave here with a foundational program that can win every single year. I know we had a lot of seniors, but we’ve got a lot of young kids coming back. Sand Rock boys basketball will be good for a long time. That means a lot to me.

“There’s a lot of things you look back on and make sure you do. I never wanted to be a school jumper. I see a lot of coaches who are successful, but I think a lot of coaches sometimes are successful because they’re chasing talent. I always wanted to be considered a coach who helped develop what mama and daddy sent me. I was never blessed to have a lot of players move in. This year, you look at every player on our team, these kids went to kindergarten and elementary school here. We didn’t have kids move in to Sand Rock. We didn’t have a lot of kids move in to Glencoe. I can think of two girls who moved into our program in those years. We were Glencoe girls. They grew up wearing black and gold. Here at Sand Rock, they grew up wanting to be a Wildcat. I take a lot of pride in that. Sometimes I think high school coaches can be successful, but they’re successful because they use some of the rules of college. I will take going out the way we went out knowing we took what mama and daddy at Sand Rock sent me and hopefully helped develop them to be as successful as we have been.”

Q: What advice would you give a young up-and-coming basketball coach?

A: “Don’t worry about your record. That’s where I see a lot of coaches mess up. One thing I always tried to do is I tried to play the best teams around and not worry about the win-loss side of it. You see a lot of teams down at Jacksonville that have right at a 60-percent winning percentage. Those teams a lot of times go on to the Final Four. You see a lot teams lose in the first round of the area tournament that’s 26-3, but who are those 26 teams they’ve played? That’s what I’ve always tried to tell any young coach who ever asks. What’s the best thing I can do? Coach fundamentals and don’t worry about your record. Go pay good, sturdy competition. Play the best out there. You’re not always going to have the best record, but if you do that, then your program will be successful at the end of the season.”

Q: So what does the future hold for John Blackwell? Do you plan to stay involved with the game?

A: “Spending a lot of time with family. I’m going to stay busy. I’m not a person who sits down. Me and wife started about 30 years ago an estate sale business. I’m going to spend a little more time doing that, spend some time in real estate. Me and my sister sale real estate. The big thing is, Monday of this week, my daughter Victoria called and said ‘Hey, me and Evelyn (Blackwell’s granddaughter) are coming to town. You want to come eat lunch with us?’ I met them at a restaurant and we ate lunch on a Monday afternoon at 12 o’clock. When we ate lunch, my granddaughter said ‘Pawpaw, let’s go ride the vroom vroom and catch a fish.’ She wanted to go ride the four wheeler and catch a fish in the pond. I think that’s a whole lot of what I’m going to do.

“I’m going to continue to watch ball. I love all sports. I told our boys here I’m going to continue to watch them. My wife likes basketball. We’re just going to pick a Tuesday night or a Friday night sometime and just go watch a good game somewhere. I’ve always kind of wanted to go watch other teams play and other coaches coach. I just hope I can watch with enjoyment and not watch with a coach’s mind. I don’t want to go watch and critique. I want to go and watch and say ‘That was a good ball game.’ That’s some things I want to be able to do.”

Q: Anything else you’d like to add?

A: “I always tried to win in the area I was coaching. I always took a lot of pride in trying to be the best team in the county. I was at Glencoe for 18 years and we played in 15 (Etowah) County championships. We won over half of them. We never had a losing record in the years I was at Glencoe to any county school. Our county record at Glencoe against county schools only, we won 122 times and only lost 38. We won 76 percent of our county games there with five other schools in the county. We never had a losing record against them.

“When I came here, it was the same thing. In five years, we won 26 and lost 11. I didn’t have a losing record against any county school in Cherokee County.

“You talk about leaving a school better than when you found it, since basketball started at Glencoe in 1924 and girls in 1976, I left there the winningest basketball coach, boys or girls, in the history of Glencoe. I didn’t know that at the time. We had an older basketball coach who just passed away and they wanted to do a little history of the boys and they asked me to help. I started going through some numbers and I’m like I’ve got more wins than any boys or girls coach in 100 years of basketball at Glencoe. That’s nice to be able to say. You leave not only a program in better shape than you found it, but leave as that school’s winningest coach ever.

“I had a lot of assistant coaches too. To be an assistant coach, you’ve got to be unselfish. You’ve got to want to work as hard as the head coach, but maybe not want the prestige of being the head coach. I think two coaches I had out of the 15 assistants who really had that mentality were Tommy Stanley at Glencoe and Kenny Beck here. They do all the dirty work and never asked for any of the glory. I think that had a lot to do with the success too.”