By Amanda Perkins
Rod Gorman announced his retirement from basketball in the spring, but it wasn’t meant to be. By August, the renowned Logan-Rogersville athletic director and boys’ basketball coach of 20 years accepted the head coaching position at Houston High.
Gorman said he grew up in Licking and now has a home at Montauk, which is close to Houston, so he recognized the offer as a great opportunity with a perfect location. Now he is charged with rebuilding a struggling program near his home turf.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE WINTER SPORTS PREVIEWS
“It’s a contrast from where I was for sure,” he said, “which was a very successful and established program at Rogersville. Here, we are trying to build it from the ground up with fundamentals, enthusiasm, and hard work.”
Gorman has won more than 500 games in his career, leading teams to nine conference championships and eight district titles and advancing to the Elite Eight six times.
In the past ten years, Houston basketball has seen almost as many coaches. Last year the team won five games, and the Tigers have won 27 total in the past six seasons.
But Gorman looks to change that and give the program much-needed stability.
“We feel like we can build a program here,” he said. “It will take work, but I wholeheartedly believe it can be done and look forward to the process.”
Upon graduating seven seniors – Kobe Sutton, Kegan Sprulin, Skylur Malam, Nathan Poynter, Caleb Adkison, Austin Schock and Dylan Coulter – the team is in a rebuilding year with one who knows how to build. They will return one starter, current senior Lucas Kelley, a 6’1” guard who can run the point and play solid defense.
Due to the last-minute hiring, Gorman has not had ample time to work with his new team, but overall, he wants to focus on taking good shots on offense, to be solid defensively, and to be fundamentally sound. “Our goals and expectations are to approach the next game as the next important game and to be as competitive as we can in each of those games,” he said. “Of course, we will try to win, but we aren’t playing for the end of the year, we aren’t playing for next year, we’re playing to just try to get better every game and to see if we can be competitive against people who don’t think we’ll be competitive against them.”
The Tigers open the season at Cuba on November 22.
While the team’s strengths remain to be seen, Gorman is optimistic about the future of the Houston Tigers. “We are working hard to change the culture and to get better,” he said.
