The Mt. Lions Boys’ Basketball program has a new head coach after the retirement of long time Coach Tom Gutshall. Dave Kyle was hired in the spring as the TCHS Boys’ Basketball Head Coach. Kyle is no stranger to the Basketball coaching box as he spent 9 years as Gutshall’s assistant coach from 1985 to 1993 and also served as TCHS Girls’ Basketball Head Coach from 1985-2001. In that time frame as Girls’ Basketball coach Kyle won 4 State Championships and brought home 2 State Runner-Up trophies. Kyle is excited to be back coaching again saying, “I am pretty excited about it, I have been out of this coaching basketball for 13 years so making the transition from girls to boys the game is much faster and I am trying to adjust to that.”
Tucker County will return 2 senior starters from last year’s State Tournament team, Derek Zirk and Owen Evans. Senior Landon Dillard is the only other returning letterman for Coach Kyle. The remaining seniors returning are Andrew Hauser, Wes Knotts and Mikhail Lewis. Other players who will look to make an impact at the varsity level are: Seth Evans, Marcus Mason, Ethan Crosten and Skyler Humphrey to name a few. Coach Kyle had 33 players come out to practice to start the season, but trimmed that number to 24 by the end of the first week. Kyle will be joined on the bench by Assistant Coach Dave Lambert. Lambert is a Tucker County native who played for coach Gutshall and graduated from TCHS in 2000.
The Mt. Lions schedule is tough again this year with a number of tests throughout the season to get them ready for the playoffs in March. Home and away games against Notre Dame, Moorefield, Trinity, Southern Garrett, Petersburg, Tygarts Valley, East Hardy, Pendleton Co and Pocahontas Co will test the Mt. Lions. Add in games against Philip-Barbour and home and away games against “AAA” Preston and a game against “AAA” Elkins will give the Tucker County team one of the toughest schedules in Class “A”.
Kyle will look to extend the State Tournament appearance streak to 14 straight years for the boys program this year. He believes it can be accomplished saying, “I think we got a pretty good nucleus there that if they continue to play hard and practice hard I think we could be ok towards the end of the season.”
The Mt. Lions will scrimmage at Buckhannon on Dec 2nd at 6pm and then host Keyser for a Scrimmage on Dec 4th at 6pm. Tucker County will open the season on Dec 9th at home against Pocahontas County. The JV game will tip off at 5:45pm and varsity will follow it. For more Tucker County Sports Info and Live Broadcast go to
TuckerCountySports.Com.
