Hunter Ferrell
By CHRIS SIERS
csiers@bedfordcounytpost.com
Hunter Ferrell has spent the past six years on the bench, seeing some of the best teams in the mid-state.
Last week, he was named the head varsity basketball coach at Community High School.
“It’s been a dream since I graduated high school to give back and have my own team and pour into players like I was poured into by all the coaches I had. I’m excited, I’m ready to go. It still hasn’t truly hit me that I’ve been given the opportunity that I prayed for and worked for so long,” Ferrell said.
Having spent his playing days at Smyrna High School, Ferrell worked as a student manager at MTSU, before joining the bench at his alma mater and eventually Centennial High School.
“I was at Smyrna High School for three years as a teacher and an assistant basketball coach and then I was at Centennial High School for the past three years as an assistant coach. This will be my first as head varsity boys basketball coach,” he said.
“I’ve been playing since I was little and had success as a middle school player and played at Smyrna High School for four years. I just fell in love with the game because it was something I realized if you put a ton of effort in, you see the rewards from that.”
Ferrell brings a detail-oriented eye to Unionville and having spent time facing the bigger Williamson County Schools for the past several years, had to gem up some creative defenses to face some of the mid-states best talent on a nightly basis.
“I just fell in love with all the details of it, whether it was the X’s and O’s or the building a team and culture. The older I got, the more I realized not many high school kids thought about basketball the way that I did. That helped drive me into further pursuing the idea of coaching,” he said.
When it comes to creating an identity for his team, Ferrell wants to build his base foundation of the program around a hard-edge defense and being the most physically aggressive team on the court.
“As a high school coach, you have to be able to adapt based on your personnel. But I still think you want to have a base philosophy. My goal is for us to be the hardest-playing every single time we play. I’m a defensive guy and I’ve worked for a defensive genius with Jeremy Moore for the past three years,” he said.
“Spending so much time talking about that side of the ball and trying to stop Division I players almost every single night in that Williamson County league kind of keeps you up at night, but it really puts the emphasis on how many games you can win by being physically and mentally tough.”
While the step into a smaller classification is certainly a change of atmosphere, Ferrell said he’s excited to embrace the small-town environment in Unionville.
“Whenever I think of Community basketball, I think of the amazing crowds and the amazing tradition. It’s really cool to continue to have a town like Unionville that comes out and supports its basketball team night in and night out. There’s such a cool tradition and cool environment in Unionville that I’m excited to be part of,” he said.
“If you look at 1A and 2A basketball, there’s really high-level teams, great crowds and environments these kids are playing in. There’s a lot of rich history and tradition that, even though they’re not bigger, they still are really important to the people coming to watch them and that’s whats exciting to me.”
So often in the coaching cycle, incoming coaches join the program late and don’t get a full complement of summer work with their team.
Being hired in the spring, Ferrell says is a giant advantage for building a rapport with the Vikings.
“I see it as a huge advantage to have this extra month to get to know the guys, to get to watch them play AAU, get spring practices in and get through that feeling each other out phase before we get to the summer, so that way when we start playing then, we can really start digging into what kind of team we want to be and what kind of expectations we’re going to have,” he said.
