By By Matthew Nascone
The Northview Chiefs and Lady Chiefs varsity basketball teams met for the final time this season at David's Catfish House Monday night. The teams had dinner and conducted a banquet for the previous season.
The Chiefs finished the season with a 12-10 record, good for the first winning record in five years. But the most shocking news to all in attendance was the retirement of Lorenzo Jones, head coach of the Lady Chiefs.
"We are going to miss coach Jones," NHS principal Gayle Weaver said. "As long as I have been here he has spent millions of hours with these girls and he always puts in late hours. And I always tell these kids if they want a role model, they don't need to look on the TV or anywhere else, they need to look at coach Jones."
Jones' resignation takes effect June 30, but he will not be far away.
"I will be somewhere around here helping out," he said. "I love this area and I love helping the girls, but I just had to call it quits on the high school level as a head coach."
Jones dropped the bomb on the crowd after dinner was served and he had honored his varsity girls with a certificate of participation. Chiefs' assistant coach, Karl Smith, presented each of the JV and varsity boys a certificate as well. Smith did this on behalf of head coach Leonard White, who received a call from his agent and is back in professional basketball.
Smith handed out a JV Academic Award to Luke Killam for his 4.0 GPA. Jackson Armstrong received the Academic Award for the varsity squad with a 3.2 GPA, Tarus Thomas snagged the Best Three-Point Shooter Award, Vincent Longmire won the Most Improved Award, and the MVP honors went to Nakita Myles.
Candice Greenwell won the Academic Award for the JV Lady Chiefs and Tanganykia Johnson earned the award for the varsity team.
The five seniors in the basketball program were also honored. Those seniors are, Tanganykia Johnson, John Donaldson, Tarrance Wright, Jackson Armstrong and Lady Chiefs' scorekeeper, Brittney Hicks.