Longtime area coach Pittman takes over Bethel High program
After a season away from being a head boys basketball coach, Steve Pittman feels rejuvenated and ready to be a head coach again. Bethel High School, an eight-minute drive from his home in Huber Heights, is his next stop.
“It just made sense,” Pittman said. “A lot of the kids I see in the YMCA in Huber. And during the year, I knew I was going to be the head coach again eventually.”
Pittman will lead his fourth area program. He coached for a year at Miami Valley School in the mid-90s. After a successful run on Darnell Hoskins’ staff at Thurgood Marshall, he was head coach at Ponitz from 2016-18. He returned to his alma mater Beavercreek in 2019 and coached the Beavers for three seasons. He compiled a record of 36-39 with the Beavers, including a district finals appearance in his first season, a 15-10 mark in his third and seven tournament victories overall.
Pittman, a 1985 Beavercreek grad who was a three-year starter for Don Donoher at Dayton, said he had great support form all levels of administration at Beavercreek, the school board and athletic director Brad Pompos.
“They made it a special place, but I was just so worn down at the end of that third season I didn’t know if I wanted to coach again or not,” Pittman said. “The thing that I told Brad Pompos is if I couldn’t give everything I had, then it would be shortchanging the school and be shortchanging him because he believed in me. And it would be shortchanging the student athletes at Beavercreek. And I definitely didn’t want to do that.”
He had no plans to coach anywhere last year until he got a call from Hoskins. When former Dunbar coach Pete Pullen left Hoskins’ staff at Northmont in September to be head coach at Trotwood-Madison, Hoskins needed a new assistant. Pittman’s son, Malcolm, was also a varsity assistant at Northmont. Malcolm Pittman, who played at Wayne and Wilmington College, will serve on his dad’s staff at Bethel.
“I didn’t expect him to come to Bethel with me, but it’s certainly going to be great working with him again,” Pittman said. “I know it was also hard for him to leave Northmont because he views Darnell as his uncle. Darnell has always been great to him and supportive of him.”
Pittman takes over a Bethel program that was led for one season by recent alum Caleb South. The Bees finished 7-16 and 4-10 in the Three Rivers Conference. The Bees return guard Mike Halleg
who averaged 15 points as a sophomore. The Bees were 10-14, 7-7 in 2021-22. Bethel enrollment has grown and moved the Bees into Division II, which is always competitive in the Dayton area at tournament time. The Bees lost a first-round game this year 95-40 to Ponitz.
“Throughout the interview process, Coach Pittman steadily rose to the top of a very deep and talented pool of candidates,” athletic director Damon Smith said in a news release. “In a program that needs stability and experienced guidance to complement our young and extremely talented athletes, his dedication to player development at the varsity level and down through the ranks to our youth program, his focus on increasing athletes’ basketball IQ, and his ability to inspire and motivate his players to reach their full potential on the court and in the classroom, he gave our committee and student-athletes the confidence that he is the leader we need to move us forward into a new era of Bethel basketball.”