After 19 seasons, Swartzentruber steps aside with FMS hoops
Farragut Middle School boys basketball head coach Randy Swartzentruber has retired from coaching after nearly two decades on the sidelines for the Admirals.
“It was just time,” Swartzentruber said. “It’s time for me to go home after school every day.
“My wife and I like to travel, and our kids are getting older and they’re getting more involved in a lot of things,” he added.
Swartzentruber, who became the Admirals’ head coach prior to the 2001-2002 season, had a successful career, winning the James A. Ivey Jr. Memorial Middle School Basketball Conference Tournament in 2009, while guiding his squad to other appearances in the tournament championship game — most recently in 2018 — along with many strong, top-tier regular season finishes.
At the time of his retirement, Swartzentruber was the dean of conference coaches. He’ll remain at FMS as a math teacher.
“Without question, this is a great place to work because you have great kids here,” he said.
“They’re all good kids here.”
He got to coach his son, Brevin, in 2019-2020, but said he’d been considering retirement from coaching for some time.
“I suppose I’ll miss this,” Swartzentruber said. “I enjoyed it. I always enjoyed it when I was doing it. But it really wasn’t something I craved.
“I had a lot of fun and I hoped the kids had fun, and I hope we all learned something,” he added.
Meanwhile, “I’ll still be around, and I told (FMS principal Wes) Edmonds that I would do whatever he needed me to do,” Swartzentruber said.
“It’s the kids that you miss the most, but I still enjoy teaching math.”
While Swartzentruber said he contemplated leaving coaching for a while, “Every year, it seemed that you had a good group coming up,” the veteran coach said.
“But you always have a good group coming up.”
