CYRIL EXPERIENCE
Shane McLemore has a busy day coaching two state tournament teams
Shane McLemore relaxed along the sideline an hour or so before he would coach the Cyril girls in a Class A state tournament game Thursday.
Glencoe coach Stephen Castlebury walked over to shake hands and said, “You got a busy day, don’t you?”
This day and every day, actually. But yes, Thursday was quite the adventure for McLemore and the entire Caddo County community, which sits 14 miles south of Anadarko. First, McLemore coached the Cyril girls to a 59-56 victory over Glencoe in the afternoon at Yukon High School. Then McLemore coached the seniorless Cyril boys in a 79-69 loss to Okay in the evening at Southern Nazarene University.
“You’re excited about both teams making it, but then you think, ‘How am I going to do all this?’” McLemore said.
You do it with a lot of support and a lot of passion for a town and a school. And McLemore comes by it honest. He’s a 1994 Cyril graduate who played in the state tournament for the Pirates. Went to Southwestern State to play basketball and rodeo, then rodeoed professionally and ranched for several years.
But McLemore caught the coaching bug and was hired by his alma mater. Nine years ago, he became Cyril’s head boys coach. And three years ago, when the girls coaching job came open, superintendent Jamie Mitchell heard loud and clear from his constituents.
“The parents wanted him, flat out,” Mitchell said. “The parents said, ‘Give him a shot.’” Mitchell was an easy sell. “Takes out a whole lot of the guesswork. Who this guy is. Is he qualified? His bleeding blue and white speaks for itself. So far, it’s worked out magically.”
So now McLemore teaches three social studies classes a day and coaches four basketball teams — boys and girls high school, boys and girls junior high. He gets help from assistant coaches, who will coordinate drills with one team while McLemore goes over strategy and team work with the other squad. And technology helps McLemore scout opponents — the Pirates’ potential semifinal opponents played Thursday at the same time as the Cyril girls, so McLemore had to depend on friends and all the video he’s collected on prospective foes. McLemore figures he brought 20 pages of notes to the state tournament.
“He does pretty much everything,” said assistant coach Paul Cowen.
And McLemore is more than glad to do it. McLemore’s sister is on the girls team (senior Shekinah Gilliam scored 13 points Thursday) and his son is on the boys team (sophomore Cason McLemore scored 37 points).
That’s fitting in a town that prides itself on family connections. But Cyril is like a lot of small-town Oklahoma; most everyone feels like family anyway. And when both basketball teams make state in the same year — a first for Cyril — that feeling mushrooms.
“This is a magic time for Cyril,” said Kathy Weedn, wife of retired Dr. Al Weedn, a 1963 Cyril graduate whose mother was in school during Cyril’s only state championship, 1938 boys basketball. Al Weedn delivered many of the current players and their parents; he likes to tell McLemore he’s “the second-best player we ever had,” after the doctor himself.
Heck, McLemore might be only the second-best coach Cyril ever had. Jeff Fletcher coached the Cyril girls to four state tournaments, 2008-11, including three finals. But McLemore is coming up fast.
“He’s a great coach,” said sophomore Paige Pendley, who scored 19 points in the girls game Thursday. “He knows how to coach us. We didn’t want him to coach us as girls, we wanted him to coach us as players.”
And so McLemore did. After his girls beat Glencoe, McLemore sat in the Yukon stands and scouted the Stonewall-Seiling game — his Pirates play Seiling at 10:30 a.m. Friday in State Fair Arena — then motored the six miles over to Bethany without so much as dinner. His squad stopped off at McDonald’s, but McLemore had to get ready for the ankle-taping and the pregame scouting that goes with the first game of a session.
“It’s awesome to have both of our teams here,” Pendley said. “This is history for us.”
Said teammate Kea Mays, who scored 15 points Thursday, “It means the world to us.”
Of course, 87.5 percent of all state-tournament teams eventually go home with a defeat. And it happened to the Cyril boys. They ran into a great team in Okay and lost their hopes of being the first Cyril team since 1938 to capture state gold. So Thursday night, they climbed onto a bus in Bethany — with the girls team, who preferred cheering on their classmates to extra rest for the state semifinals — for the 70-mile trip home.
Friday morning, Cyril will return to the state tournament, but with just one team instead of two.
“It’s emotional,” McLemore said. “But this is what I love doing. That’s why I took both (jobs). I love it. Wouldn’t trade anything for it.”