High school basketball: To watch his own kids play, Rory Hamilton leaving T-Wolves coaching chair
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Mar. 27—Rory Hamilton may not be certain he's cut out to not be a basketball coach for any real length of time.
"After a year," he said Friday, "my wife may tell me, 'We need to get you back into the gym.'"
Still, he's going to give it a try.
"I'm at peace with it," he said.
Norman North's girls basketball coach for the past seven seasons, Hamilton's looking forward to watching his sports from the bleachers, rather than the coaching chair.
That's why, earlier this week, he resigned as the North girls' skipper. He plans to continue his role as a geometry teacher at the school.
Hamilton's daughter, Avery, is a volleyball player, who attends Alcott Middle School. His son, Maddox, just finished his sophomore season as a part of coach Kellen McCoy's Norman North boys program.
"Over the last two or three years, it's just become more and more difficult to be a full-time teacher and coach and be present for all of my kids' activities," Hamilton said. "The challenges are endless and I'm always going to put my family first."
Under Hamilton, the T-Wolves sometimes struggled to put points on the board, yet, generally speaking, playing hard, defending and rebounding, they always won, too.
The high point of his tenure came during the culmination of the 2018-19 season, when he guided a team that counted just one Division I prospect — Jessica Evans (Tulsa) — to the Class 6A state championship game against a Norman High team that counted four freshmen or sophomores who have since committed to or signed with Division I programs.
"That was a team that really wasn't picked to do much," Hamilton said, yet behind the leadership of point guard Jacie Evans "we overachieved and got there."
Quietly, Hamilton racked up 110 wins, more than any of his predecessors.
Always, he valued the program and the players under his watch.
"The day to day interactions, the relationships that you build with your players, the trust, the camaraderie, the investment," Hamilton said were the things he would miss the most. "I sure hope my players know that every day, every practice, I tried to empty my bucket with them."
Perhaps he'll coach again.
Maybe that day will come relatively sooner than later.
But not now.
"I've been coaching since I was 23 and I'll be 46 in July and my kids are only going to be in high school one time," Hamilton said. "I think I just need to be in a position where I'm a dad."
Clay Horning
405 366-3526
Follow me @clayhorning
