Thirty years were spent in a classroom with moody teenagers, and then after a full school day in a gym with the girls basketball team.
Coach Greg Mays has taught English class and coached girls basketball for thirty years, and fifteen of those years were spent at Hastings High. Mays was in high school when his very first coaching job became available to him. One of his classmates that worked at the local YMCA asked him and a buddy of his to coach a soccer team; they had a shortage of coaches. They agreed and it turned out they only needed supervised.
“They pulled the ultimate sucker move on us. They gave us the best kids in town, and we were loaded. We dominated the league, and I thought I was such a smart coach so I have been coaching since then,” Mays said.
Coaching the second graders in town inspired Mays to keep coaching throughout his whole life. His next coaching job was in college. He coached a freshman AAU team, which is a traveling summer basketball team. He coached a couple of tournaments and got beat by everyone.
“I loved it, and that’s when I really decided I wanted to coach. I always intended to teach, but I really enjoyed that. Then that next year is when I helpedat the junior high level and I really really enjoyed that,” Mays said.
Mays spent seven years coaching basketball at the junior high level then moved to the high school coaching boys junior varsity for three years. His next big step after that was applying for the varsity head coaching spot, but Mays did not get it.
“After not getting the coaching position I decided that it would be in my best interest to take some time away from basketball. The first year I was alright until the state tournament, then the next year I went insane in November. I dragged my three year old son to every basketball game going on in the area and then my wife said I needed to go find a job,” Mays said.
He then went down to Blue Hill as the head basketball coach for five years, by that time he became the head football coach and the athletic director for the last three years. Mays came back to Hastings High for an assistant coaching position in football. However, he was lucky enough to get the open English position as well. A couple days later he got a call that was announcing the girls varsity head coach job was open.
“I looked around my house a couple times, realized I had three daughters and I was like alright I can do that, and that’s how I ended up here,” Mays said.
Since Mays has been coaching here for 30 years, reflecting on his past seasons as a Tiger was one of his favorite things to do. When he was asked about his favorite season or group of girls he mentioned his last season, and then he talked about his best year of girls.
“The first girls who broke through for our program were Sophia Pankratz, Annie Grealish, Libby Knapple, Jamie Johnson, and Elizabeth Franseen. It was a big class. The first year with them was not very good, but we were expecting to be a lot better next year. Then the next year came and the girls were physically tired from their fall sport,” Mays said.
One of the main reasons Mays was okay retiring this years was because how confident he was in the lower classmen and how proud he was of his last season. With that being said, Mays announced on twitter that he will continue to teach English but now his focus will be on running his popular twitter account Suiting up Varsity, and writing a book about the history of Hastings High sports.
“When I was in high school I would always check out this one book called Nebraska High School Sports. It was published in 1980, and my dad’s name was in there. The guy who published it tried to write one for the year 2000, but he never got it done and died a couple years later. I always thought it needed to be done again so I thought I would do it,” Mays said.
The girls basketball schedule bounced around from every town in Nebraska to play, and Mays would take pictures of the trophy cases, and record to post on Suiting up Varsity. But now that he does not coach, he will travel on his own to go see new things.
“It’s much more freeing, I don’t have to do anything after school really anymore, so now I’m able to chase my next dream of publishing a book about my favorite thing, high school sports,” Mays said.
