When selecting the newest head coach for the Enid High Basketball team, if you wanted experience, it would have been hard to find someone with more experience than forty-six-year Coach Russ Gilmore. He has coached in four different states and several levels of basketball, including stints as head coach at Pryor Creek and Guthrie here in Oklahoma. Gilmore had retired in South Texas, but after a couple of years, he found that he missed coaching and being around young people. He felt that he still had something left to give to a program and wanted to make an impact on kids’ lives, so he started reaching out, and here he is in Enid, Oklahoma.
Coach Gilmore was somewhat familiar with Enid, so he had an idea that he’d be walking into a program that had some athletes who needed some direction, and that’s what he found in the first days of practice. With only three Seniors on the 10–11-man Varsity team, they are young and slightly inexperienced, at least in a competitive 6A environment.
Gilmore is excited that they have a lot of room for improvement and believes he really has something they can build with, and he believes that they can only get better. While they have struggled to find wins, playing their tough schedule has given him an opportunity to see what he has on the team and the chance for the boys to show what they can be. “These tough games can only make us better,” he says. And while the wins haven’t come as quickly as anyone would like, Gilmore believes that the morale is still high and the kids are having fun, and as the season goes on, the improvement will be obvious.
The strengths of the team are athleticism and defense so far, but they have struggled finishing at the rim and shooting the ball. The coach believes that shots will start dropping a little more as the young guys get more experience dealing with the pace and physicality of the talented teams they play.
While he’d like to single out every player, he credits Senior Zyire Allen, a Point Guard, and Junior Julian Jenkins as being some of the strong leaders on the team. “Zyire exudes confidence, which probably comes from having played for a lot of minutes. He’s vocal on the court and gets the kids going,” Gilmore says.
Another struggle this team has is matching up size wise with other large schools, which is why Gilmore is quick to point out a freshman who has made an impact with not only his size but his skills as well. “Cashton Mathis has really helped us in the post, even as a freshman,” Gilmore says. He continues with “He has good feet, good hands, and a nice touch around the basket, and it doesn’t hurt he’s the tallest we have for now. We have some help in that department on the way, though, I think.”
Even in a rebuilding year, these kids are working hard and putting it all out there on the Court, and they would love the support of the community at their future games.
