With large shoes to fill, Evan Callihan is ready to cement his own legacy at Waverly

WAVERLY — After Travis Robertson announced his decision to step down as Waverly's head boys' basketball coach after 15 seasons, it left the program with questions about who would be their next leader.

After an extensive search, they decided that former Circleville assistant coach, Evan Callihan was the right man for the job.

“I don’t think you can replace someone like Coach [Travis] Robertson,” Callihan said. “His legacy speaks for itself. I knew that when the time came for me to be a head coach, I just had to be myself. I can only control the things that I can control and that is to give everything I got to the players in our program. So, I am going to try to build on the legacy of Waverly basketball.”

Prior to accepting the Waverly position, Callihan was an assistant girls' basketball coach under head coach, Steve Kalinoski for seven years.

While a part of the Lady Tigers' staff, Callihan said that Kalinoski helped to shape him into the coach that he is today.

“It was a blessing coaching with Kalinoski,” Callihan said. "I owe a lot to him. He made it all about the players from day one. It is not really about us coaches, it is about the kids that we are leading. How can we help them? How can we help them have the best chance possible to succeed off and on the court?"

Even with the bonds that Callihan had cultivated over the past several years, his yearning to be a head coach continued to grow. So, when the Waverly position became available, he said that he was immediately interested.

“Communities like Waverly are what high school sports are all about,” Callihan said. “Being from Circleville, I knew that Waverly was a tight-knit community that backed its sports. When I was going through the interview process, I got a lot of support from their administration. They made me feel really welcome right away. I knew that this was someplace that I wanted to be.”

This year, the community will be supporting a team that has experienced a seismic personnel shift since their Division II state championship run.

In addition to the departure of their head coach, they also lost several impactful seniors like Trey Robertson, Will Futhey, and Mark Stulley.

However, the expectations for the team's returning players remain high, which Callihan said was not necessarily a bad thing.

“The kids are going to feel pressure this year and I am too,” Callihan said. “There are going to be high expectations, but I think you should want that. Pressure is a privilege and when people hold you to a high standard, that is a good thing. We do not want to run away from it, we want to run at it and attack it.”

So how does Callihan plan on attacking these heightened expectations?

First, he said that his players have to show up to summer workouts ready to buy-in.

“We recognize the success they had last year, but for the group that is here now, it is their time to leave behind their own legacies,” Callihan said. “A lot of that starts in June. It starts with hard work, preparation, and remaining committed to getting better. I think that it is easy to say that you want to do something, but if our habits and our actions do not align with that, then that all goes out the window. It is great to have big goals, but we have to work towards it.”

As enthusiastic as the team may be to get to work on those bigger goals, Callihan said that they have to prioritize the details instead of focusing just on the bigger picture.

“I think the first goal is to win the league,” Callihan said. "Of course, you want to try to get back to where they made it last year. Saying those goals is the easy part, but what are you going to do to attain them? We are going to have those big goals, but we are going to talk about those everyday goals that lead to things like that. So, every day during practice, we are going to discuss daily goals, whether that be having high energy, giving your best effort, or playing together as a group."

This article originally appeared on Chillicothe Gazette: Introducing Evan Callihan as Waverly's new boys' basketball coach