New North Olmsted coach moves over from Independence

Johnson was also assistant at Fairview

North Olmsted’s basketball programs had quite the shake-up this offseason. Along with Nolan Turpin being hired to head the girl’s program, Kyle Johnson was brought on board as the new head coach of the Eagles boy’s basketball program. His contract was approved at the Board of Education meeting June 15.

Having the proximity to his family after his prior head coaching stop at Independence was one of the draws to the job.

“The biggest reason was to be closer to my family,” Johnson said. “We live out here in Bay Village. So for me the proximity for even our away games in the GLC West is going to give me an opportunity to be closer with my kiddos and family. Playing in Independence and the CVC, we were driving an hour away for most, but not all, of our away games. Those are late nights with having little kids, and it was hard. The second reason is the opportunity to coach at a school that’s one of — if not the biggest — in the GLC West.”

Johnson has familiar with one of the teams in the area, having previously served as a varsity assistant at Fairview for a number of years. This summer, as he’s started to build his program, has been focused around what can be controlled is the first step in development.

“This summer, we’ve really honed in on controlling the things we can control,” he said. “All summer, we’ve been focusing on these four things: Playing hard, competing, being a selfless teammate and having great body language. I’m trying to work on the intangibles first before we get to the X’s and O’s. Similar to that, I want to be a team that we’re going to guard people and play defense.”

“You can control the defensive end. Offensively, you’re going to have good and bad shooting nights. But we need to make sure we’re able to guard people.”

In a day and age where offense is the name of the game, those defensive intangibles are crucial to Johnson’s thinking of controlling what can be controlled.

“You’re going to give up points, it’s just making them tough on the opponent,” Johnson explained. “Whether it’s contesting shots or controlling the paint area, those are two things we did over at Independence and had some success doing it over there. I’m just hoping to bring that same idea over to North Olmsted.”

While the varsity squad only won four games in 2021-22, the younger squads have talent that has started to win within the program to help key a turnaround.

“Our freshman team won 13 games last year and our junior varsity won 15. Those younger guys have seen some success, which helps,” he said. “I think for me, we just have to be able to communicate and trust each other. Whenever you’re wanting to start to change a culture or whatever you want to call it, you have to be able to trust each other and communicate. To me, those are two new things, especially coming into a new program, building on that first. Then when the season starts, we can get into our X’s and O’s and philosophies, and things like that.”

Johnson