BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Telegraph Staff Writer
Andree Thomas is walking into what one would view as a pressure-filled situation — and he admits that — but it’s also a situation that presents a great opportunity and one he’s looking forward to.
Thomas is the new Bradford High School varsity boys basketball head coach, taking over for Sampson Jackson, who stepped down after two years to focus 100-percent of his time to his role as athletic director. The Tornadoes won the program’s first-ever state championship last year.
“There’s pressure just based on the fact that the formula he put together worked, so there’s literally no excuse,” Thomas said. “You have to find success.”
Of course, since the coach who had that success is also the AD, he’s always nearby and great source of information for Thomas to use.
“It puts the responsibility on me to pick his brain, to really figure out how he found success and then to just build on it,” Thomas said, adding, “I know he’s going to be busy and stretched out with all the sports now, but he’s still a basketball guy at heart. He won’t be too far.”
Thomas, who’ll also be a P.E. teacher at Bradford Middle School, is a native of Lansing, Michigan, who spent the past year as an assistant coach at Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, Colorado. He was an assistant at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Alabama, before that and has also been an assistant coach at the high-school level at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, as well as a head coach at Impact Basketball Academy in Sarasota.
Cornerstone Christian Academy, where he experienced a state championship, provided him with his first coaching opportunity. Since then, Thomas has been looking for an opportunity to return to the high-school level.
“I actually enjoy the environment of high-school basketball,” Thomas said, adding, “I just hadn’t had the right opportunity and the right situation to kind of get back into it.”
The right situation presented itself when Thomas moved to Florida and came across the posting for the BHS position. Thomas said he talked to Jackson the next day. Two days after that, he interviewed for the job. He was hired two weeks later.
“It happened really, really fast,” Thomas said, “but I feel like it’s the right position. I felt like it was something I couldn’t not apply for, especially being new to this area.”
Thomas also knows he’s in the right position because of something Jackson said. Thomas said during a talk the two had, Jackson breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Now I can just be the AD because I’ve found somebody I can trust.”
“Just that alone — that’s why I don’t feel overwhelming pressure because I know I have somebody who’s got my back,” Thomas said. “I know he honestly believes in me. That makes me feel really, really good.”
He hasn’t coached a game yet at BHS, but Thomas already feels as if he belongs. He watched every video of last year’s team he could find on YouTube as well as game videos that Jackson shared with him.
“I have become a Bradford Tornado by osmosis, I believe,” Thomas said.
Thomas played basketball as a youth and went on to play at Howard University. (He later went to Virginia State University, where he graduated.) What appealed to him about the sport was the fact that it allowed him to express himself in ways he wasn’t comfortable with.
“I’m naturally a quiet guy,” Thomas said. “It brought me out of my shell.”
Even though he got a chance to play in college, Thomas said he was still in high school when he realized that coaching was in his future.
“I knew I would coach. I knew I would be a better coach than I was a player,” Thomas said, adding, “It’s always been my niche.”
Thomas said his recent experiences as an assistant coach will help him in his new role, citing the fact he had many game-day responsibilities, such as being the coach in charge of substitutions or the coach who drew up things in certain situations.
BHS players will find that their new coach is laid-back during games. Practices, on the other hand, are a different matter.
“I’m much more vocal and much more animated at practice than I actually am in games,” Thomas said. “My practices are so much harder than the games. Once the game time comes, I pretty much let guys do what they do, and we have conversations.”
Thomas said what players will also learn is that no one loves the game more than he does. He may not be a player on a team anymore, but he still plays and still puts forth the effort to be the best he can be.
“I have a very unique way of getting guys to understand how important hard work is because the hardest worker on the team will have to be in the gym more than I am. That’ll be hard to do,” Thomas said. “They’ll like it. I think they’ll like someone who’s still able to play, someone who still gets excited about getting shots up. I still challenge myself to shoot 70 percent when I shoot, so it’s a good way to connect to them. It’s also a way to lead by example.”
Though he said how his teams look offensively will depend on personnel, Thomas admitted he’s a coach that wants his teams to play up-tempo, hold an advantage in offensive rebounds and make an effort to get to the free-throw line.
It’s not offense, though, that really gets Thomas’ blood flowing.
“Defensively, I like to get after it,” he said. “I’m a defensive guy. I love causing turnovers and turning those into easy offense.”
Thomas had to have loved what he saw watching some of the Tornadoes’ games from last season. BHS averaged 11 steals per game and forced 24 turnovers in its 64-44 win over Paxton for the state championship. After that game, Chalil Cummings, a rising junior, said he and his teammates enjoyed causing turnovers and taking charges more than they enjoyed scoring.
When Jackson told Thomas that his team had taken 12 charges in that state-championship game, Thomas was astounded, replying, “How in the world did you get a group of guys to take 12 charges in a state championship?”
Thomas, of course, knows the answer. Jackson made defense a priority. It’s what the players focused on in practices. During games, they saw how it paid dividends.
“If that’s what got you there, you understand the importance of it,” he said. “(Jackson) did an amazing job of explaining why those things are important.”
He may see himself as walking into a situation where he has no choice but to win because of last season and the players who are returning, but Thomas also knows that more goes into defining success than the number of wins. His goal, no matter how each season plays out, is to see improvement from the season’s start to its end. More importantly, he wants to see improvement in the players who weren’t standouts the previous season or who are newcomers to the team.
Helping to bring out the best in every player — that’s why he coaches.
“To watch someone who averaged two points a game go to averaging eight points a game — that’s the kind of stuff that makes me genuinely excited,” Thomas said, adding, “That’s why I do it.”
Coaching is also about building relationships and helping young people as they prepare for life. It’s being there for a student-athlete when they have questions that aren’t related to the sports they play. It’s being there to give advice or encouragement if they want it.
Thomas said he’s fortunate to still have relationships with players he coached at Cornerstone Christian Academy who are now in college.
“It stretches so far beyond just basketball or athletics,” Thomas said. “It’s the academic side. It’s the personal side. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to help one of those guys with an internship down the road.
“Being able to form those relationships and letting them know I’m on their side, I think, is very important.”
