By Josh Krueger, Staff Writer, Newport Daily News
March 26, 2014
Saying he wants to spend more time with his kids in the winter months, Jim Psaras will step down after 29 seasons.
NEWPORT — A nearly three-decade coaching career, one in which he accumulated more than 400 victories, was enough for Jim Psaras.
“My basketball is not done. It’s just that my time being a leader as the boys basketball coach at Rogers High School is over,” Psaras said Tuesday after the school announced his resignation.
A news conference is set for Thursday night, when Psaras will formally announce he is leaving a program he’s been with for 29 years, including 26 as the head coach.
“It’s predicated all on my children. I want to be able to, during the winter months, be supportive of my children in any way possible,” Psaras said. “I spent a lot of time and have given a huge commitment to Newport studentathletes. The timing is right.”
Psaras said he informed his children — daughter Julia, 14, and son Will, 10 — of his decision Monday.
“It was a very emotional period last night, but I think they will know and they will see that I don’t want to miss any of their games, miss any of their activities,” he said. “I believe it’s in the best interest of my children, and it’s a change that professionally and personally is good for me.”
On Sunday, Psaras met with assistant coaches Mike and Frank Newsome and Rob McEvoy, as well as former assistant and current Middletown boys coach Kevin Lendrum, to break the news.
“They were very supportive,” Psaras said. “When you have former players that have become your assistant coaches, and become part of my family, they were very supportive. It was good. It was difficult, but none of this has been easy for me. I’ve put in the time and the commitment in lots of forms and fashions, and I can’t let it go that easy.”
Mike Newsome played for Psaras in the 1990s, and has been one of his assistant coaches for nearly 10 years. He said he and Psaras previously had discussed Psaras’ decision to step down, and Newsome had an idea of what the coach had to say when he organized a dinner on Sunday.
“I knew Coach’s daughter is about to go to high school and I know he really loves watching her play,” Newsome said. “At a certain point in time he was going to make this decision because he was going to want to see her play more and be more involved with Will and his sports.”
Lendrum spent more than a dozen seasons on Psaras’ staff at Rogers before taking over the Middletown boys program prior to the 2010-11 season. Lendrum said he also suspected Psaras’ motive for the dinner.
“I had a feeling when he said he wanted to get together,” Lendrum said. “It was surprising a little bit. He’s been there for so long, but his kids are getting older and I know he wants to be part of their lives as well.
“It’s hard to imagine him not being on the sidelines for Rogers basketball. He’s a fixture there.”
Having a fixture like Psaras, Lendrum said, was part of what made the program so successful.
“In any program, one of the most important factors is that consistency, plus the fact that he knows pretty much everything about basketball helps,” Lendrum said. “A good majority of what I learned came from him. I thought I knew basketball — I played college basketball. I realized I didn’t know anything.”
Coaches who stay with high school programs for the long term are becoming more and more rare, so the fact Psaras stayed as long as he did and established himself as the face of the boys basketball program at Rogers did not go unappreciated.
“To the program, he’s meant everything. He’s been the cornerstone,” Rogers athletic director Jim Cawley said. “Especially now with coaches … I turn over a third of the coaching staff pretty much every year, so for a coach to last 10 years is in some ways miraculous. To have one that’s been with the program and how quickly he came in and made the identity his own … he was someone who’s definitely carried that torch and took great pride in that.”
That pride wasn’t limited to the boys basketball program.
Psaras was on hand for the Rogers girls team’s run to the Division II championship and cheered on the Vikings in the title game on Sunday at the Ryan Center.
“It’s been a very long stretch, very emotional move for me, watching with so much Viking pride our girls accomplish what they did in the fashion they did and having different relationships with kids on that team,” Psaras said. “It’s been a difficult time, and I know that this will be very difficult for me on Thursday, but it has to get done and I want to do it the right way.”
Both Newsomes also were there on Sunday, and Mike Newsome said there was no discussion before hand about the boys coaches going to the girls game. It was a given.
“We support the school. It’s not just about basketball, it’s about Rogers High School, Newport Public Schools,” he said.
The search for Psaras’ successor hasn’t begun, Cawley said, but it will soon.
“That will be a process we’ll have to jump into fairly quickly,” he said. “We’ll get together with the HR department and have them advertise as normal. I expect this one to generate more interest than most.”
As of yet, none of Psaras’ assistants has directly expressed interest, according to Cawley.
“I think everybody’s on the same page,” he said. “We’ll let Jimmy finish out and then I’m sure we’ll be having some conversations.”
Mike Newsome said he is very interested and will apply for the job.
“I’ve been under his wing for about eight or nine years now, being his top assistant. I have much interest in the job,” he said. “I’m applying when it opens up. I’ll do my best to hopefully convince the committee that I’m the right person for the job. Coach taught me do it with class and I will do it with class. We’ll be a class act.”
Because of what Psaras has done for the program, Newsome agreed with Cawley that the position is likely to draw considerable interest.
“The respect that coach has from the other coaches around the state, I think it does make it a job that certain people are going to apply for and want,” Newsome said. “The only thing that’s going to deter folks, if it does, is because we’re in the back of Newport, but there will be a considerable amount of candidates.”
Whichever candidate ends up with the job will have “big shoes to fill,” Newsome said.
“He’s done an awesome job. It’s going to be different,” he added. “You have that foundation to a program. Even though the program started way before him, he’s held that program in high esteem for 26 years. He’s going to be sorely missed.”
