Board must ratify decision, but former Huntington North and Jay County coach is athletic department’s recommendation
By RYAN WALKER
The Bluffton Athletic Department has officially announced it will recommend Craig Teagle as its new head boys’ basketball coach. The school board is expected to approve of the recommendation at next month’s board meeting.
The news was rumored to be announced earlier in the week by Outside The Huddle but was officially announced the morning of Friday, June 16, by BHMSD.
This will be the third head coach for the Tigers this year, with Karl Grau stepping down and his replacement Adam Gray resigning last week for “personal reasons.”
With the late resignation of Gray and the summer basketball program up and running, the Athletic Department had to scramble to hire a new candidate to take over. In a press release from BHMSD, it stated Athletic Director Steve Thompson had to review previous coaches applying for the position and “conducted numerous phone conversations with coaches across the state in an effort to find the right candidate to lead our young men.”
Teagle, the head coach for Huntington North over the past eight years, was hired by New Albany two months ago but decided to step down last week and quickly ended up at Bluffton.
Teagle is excited about the opportunity and leading the team to success.
“I am excited to be at Bluffton, and we will do everything to lead the student-athletes in the right way and produce a good product,” Teagle said in the release from BHMSD.
The departure was a bit of a stroke of luck for Bluffton, as Teagle has an impressive 443-267 record in his 31 years of head coaching experience, most recently at Huntington North and Jay County. His 443 wins are currently 14th on the active winningest coaches list, according to the johnharrell.net website.
Thompson said, “I am excited to welcome Coach Teagle to the Bluffton community. He is known throughout the state for being a great basketball coach, but he is also a man with strong character and high standards who wins the right way. I know that our teams and our young will flourish under Coach Teagle.”
The Tigers will look to lean on Teagle’s experience to help turn the program around. The team has gone 6-39 in its last two seasons.
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