Newby honored by IBCA
Mar. 27—Three Indiana high school girls basketball coaches have been chosen as 2023 Bob King Coaches of the Year by their peers in the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association.
Brodie Garber of Class 3A state champion Fairfield, Zach Newby of Class 2A state runner-up Lapel and Jeff Allen of Class 4A state champion Bedford North Lawrence have been selected as honorees for the 2022-23 season through voting that occurred from late January through early March, IBCA executive director Marty Johnson said.
Honors are awarded according to IHSAA district boundaries, and one coach from each district is a recipient — Garber in District 1, Newby in District 2 and Allen in District 3. These three coaches will receive plaques as an IBCA District Coach of the Year during the 2023 IBCA Clinic set for April 20-21 at Mount Vernon High School in Fortville.
The Coach of the Year award is named for the late Bob King, the IBCA executive director from 1984-94. King was a Lebanon native who coached at Sacred Heart and Shortridge high schools in Indianapolis before serving as an assistant basketball coach at Purdue. He later also was an assistant athletic director and associate athletic director at Purdue.
The 2023 IBCA/Bob King Coaches of the Year for boys basketball will be announced later.
Newby is the IBCA District 2 Coach of the Year after leading Lapel to a 22-8 season that included a Class 2A state runner-up finish.
His Bulldogs earlier clipped the nets by winning the Madison County Tournament, the Wapahani sectional, the Lapel regional and the Logansport semistate.
Newby has compiled an 82-42 record in five seasons as a head coach after assisting the boys' and girls' programs for a combined eight years at Lapel, his alma mater. His teams posted 16-8, 17-7, 10-11 and 17-8 ledgers in his first four campaigns, then broke through this season with the program's first county title in 17 years and snapped 16-year sectional and regional droughts before seizing the Bulldogs' first semistate trophy.
A 2006 graduate of Lapel, Newby was a four-year member of the basketball program and played for coaches Derek Shelton, Tim Hillenbrand and Hall of Famer Jimmie Howell. He attended Ball State, earning a bachelor's degree in education in 2010.
Newby returned to Lapel, serving as an assistant coach in Howell's boys' program for three seasons, in Kevin Brattain's girls' program for four seasons and in Howell's boys' program for one more season before becoming the girls' head coach in the spring of 2018.
He has been a teacher for Frankton-Lapel Community Schools for 13 years, currently teaching health and physical education classes at Lapel High School.
Newby and his wife, Kayla, are parents to two children — Noah, 10, and Laken, 6.
Contact Rob Hunt at
or 765-640-4886.
