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Kish heading back home

Champion graduate to coach Golden Flashes basketball

Champion boys basketball will have a new face roaming the sidelines next winter, but to those in the community, the “new” face is all too familiar. Flashes basketball legend and 2000 graduate Nathan Kish will be Champion’s head man, taking over for Jamie Carrino, who coached the team for the past two seasons.

Kish, who previously held Champion’s school scoring record-prior to Lucas Nasonti breaking the mark this past season, spent the last six years at Maplewood. In his time with the Rockets, Kish’s teams made it to a Division IV sectional bracket final each year, plus, appeared in three district semifinals, along with a 2014 Division IV Grand Valley District title game loss to Cornerstone Christian.

“It’s bitter sweet,” Kish said. “I’m excited to start (at Champion) and of course I went there, but I had a great career at Maplewood. It’s hard to leave all of the relationships I’ve built there over the last six years.”

Kish said that he was approached by people in the Champion community — where he still resides, about taking the vacant head coaching job, following Carrino’s departure.

From there, he was contacted by Champion’s principal, John Grabowski, about the opening, before officially being approved by the school board this past Monday night.

Kish explained that ever since he was little, he wanted to be a coach, and dating back to his college days as a player at Roberts Wesleyan, he knew he wanted to teach and coach at his alma mater.

Thus far, he still remains a teacher at Maplewood, but now, he has an opportunity to realize his dream coaching job with the Flashes. “I’d like to see Champion be steady,” Kish explained. “I want to come in here and have some stability. I’ll be the fifth head coach here in the last eight years, and it’s hard to bring stability and consistency when you’re facing that.”

Despite his love for his alma mater, the former Rockets and Lordstown Red Devils coach cherishes his time spent elsewhere. In fact, Kish has even learned a thing or two about himself as a coach, which has certainly translated onto the hardcourt, based on his recent success.

Kish, who will have an all-new coaching staff at Champion, has come to realize in his eight years as a head coach that success in coaching isn’t just predicated by one individual, but rather, the group as a whole.

“One thing is you can’t do things on your own,” Kish said. “You have to keep learning every year. And every year, the personnel changes a little bit to the kids around you. You have to be able to listen to others.”

Ultimately, the decision to come to Champion goes beyond simply pursuing his dreams. Kish has a growing family and he wanted to bring his own personal stability to the Kish household for years to come.

“I always used to say that coaches who resigned from other jobs and said it was ‘to spend more time with family’ were just making excuses,” Kish said, laughing. “But, as it turns out, once I saw it firsthand with my own family, I completely understood what those coaches were going through.

“I have two children, 6 and 4 (years old), they’re starting to play sports. I’m coaching my son’s pee wee baseball team and it’s so challenging to drive from Maplewood to Champion everyday. I live 4/10th’s of a mile from (Champion High School) and this was an opportunity be closer to home.”

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