McFall fills Raiders’ head coaching vacancy

John McFall, the state championship-winning former Olathe South basketball coach, likes to tell a story from when his son Brett played for him.

It was the offseason one year, and Brett wanted his father to guess how many three-pointers he had made while practicing during the summer. John guessed 150. The correct answer was 3,000.

“He just has a tremendous feel for the game, tremendous love for the game, tremendous work ethic,” McFall says of his son.

All that should serve Brett well in his new post.

Brett McFall won Kansas 6A state championships as a player in 1997 at Olathe South and later as an assistant coach for his father. He played college basketball at Wyoming and professionally for a year in The Netherlands.

And now he is the new head boys basketball coach at Shawnee Mission South. It’s his first varsity head coaching position.

“He’s ready,” John McFall says.

Pat Cormack resigned as the Raiders’ coach after the recent season, and with a hiring freeze in the school district, SM South athletic director John Johnson looked in-house for a replacement.

That’s where he found McFall, who spent the last four seasons as the program’s junior varsity coach after two seasons in the same capacity at Olathe South.

McFall rattles off some numbers — that SM South has had only four winnings seasons in the last 13 years, and that the Raiders have been to the state tournament once since 1990, when the school won the 6A state championship.

“I can remember when I was growing up (SM South) was always a big basketball school,” he says. “I’d like to get it back to where it was and get everybody excited about Shawnee Mission South.”

Recalling Brett as a player, John McFall says his son was “one of a handful of players that saw things on the floor that I didn’t see occasionally.”

Now, as a head coach himself, the younger McFall sees something in the SM South program. And he’s eager to get started.

submitted by RYAN YOUNG - 2009-05-05 14:30:02

Comments - leave comment