Published: August 16, 2008 12:15 am         

McKaig takes reins of Pioneer girls hoops

He points to fundamentals as priority

ROYAL CENTER — A Pioneer grad has taken over as the Panthers’ new varsity girls basketball coach.

Darren McKaig, who graduated from Pioneer in 1997, was hired earlier this week to replace Shawn Kimmel, who stepped down from the post earlier this summer to take a teaching job closer to home at East Noble High School.

McKaig is entering his seventh year as a math teacher at Pioneer High School. During those years he has coached various sports at the junior high level and was a varsity assistant for the girls basketball program during the 2005 season and was the junior varsity coach the next two seasons.

McKaig said his first priority with the team is to work on fundamentals.

“I’m gonna try to improve their fundamental skills — ball-handling, shooting. Those are the two biggest things I see,” he said. “We haven’t had the greatest seasons here late, but I think there’s a lot of potential there. We just need to work on our ball-handling and shooting, and defense of course.”

The Panthers went just 4-17 this past season. In the IHSAA Tournament they defeated South Newton 31-27 in their sectional opener before falling to arch-rival Caston 35-30 in a sectional semifinal contest.

McKaig said he’ll try to improve on the Panthers’ four-win season of a year ago “by quite a bit.”

“We’ll try to come up with strategies that work with the players we have,” McKaig added. “We have a good player inside, so we’ll try to get the ball to her. I’m going to try to put a bigger focus on shooting from the outside, too.”

The good player McKaig referred to is senior Katy Fox, who averaged around 14 points per game this past season and has been starting on a successful AAU team this summer.

“It’s definitely nice to come into a program that has a player like that,” McKaig said. “Another senior, Maggie Peacock, has done a lot of good things defensively from what I’ve seen.

“We only lose one player from last year to graduation. We have several players who dressed varsity back. We have a good sophomore class with a couple of junior who will help too.”

McKaig was a three-year letterwinner in basketball when he attended Pioneer in the ‘90s.

“Darren was an All-American kid when he was in high school,” Pioneer athletic director Mike Johnson said. “He was a good student, a good athlete, a good kid.

“He’s extremely interested in the sport and he’s interested in being a good coach and he’s interesting in building the program,” the Pioneer AD continued. “I know he’ll work hard at it and do everything he can to get that program going in the right direction.”

Beau Wicker can be contacted at

(574) 732-5113 or via e-mail at beau.wicker@pharostribune.com