The following is a summary of an interview with former Warren County High School girls basketball coach Erick Baird, who was fired Friday after five years coaching the Lady Pioneers. He candidly touched on an array of topics while speaking with Standard sports editor Jeffery Simmons. His comments on each topic are listed.

The reasoning
behind his exit

“They basically brought me in there and said they wanted to go in a different direction. As a coach, you’re on a one-year contract. The old saying my buddy once told me was, ‘There’s two types of coaches – those that are fired and those that are getting fired.’ It’s always a possibility.
When I asked why, they said it was the district record. We got a big win at White County and beat Stone Memorial at home. Stone beat Livingston Academy at home and they were a state team in AA. Our district paid us no favors this season and that’s just what District 6-AAA is right now.”

Describing his
reaction

“It kind of blind-sided me with the way our season went. I thought we were overachievers this year. We won two Christmas tournaments, which was a great job.
“You don’t want to make it messy. It’s really not about me or about them. It’s about the kids.”

His feelings – “It hurt. It’s one of those things when you get released from a coaching job, it’s not just the coaching. It’s the community. It’s the kids. It’s the Little Pioneer League and the AAU programs.”
Trying to break through in
Warren County
“It’s tough as an outsider to come into the community and try to sell your style. You’ll upset that coach who didn’t do too well in the past. You’ll upset someone who doesn’t agree with your philosophy and they’ll let you know to your face. You’ll upset those parents who watch basketball on TV and think they know the game. It’s taken me 16 years to learn basketball and I’ve never called myself a basketball guru. My assistants and I just tried to put a good product on the court and I thought we did that.”

On trying to
rebuild WCHS

“This wasn’t going to be a quick fix. I don’t think I was given enough time for people to see the  overall product. I don’t think coach Tommy Johnson was given enough time. John Dillard wasn’t given enough time.
Just like it takes years for a program to diminish, it takes years to build it back. And when you try to change something, you upset people. And a couple of upset people can go back and destroy things. I never understand the negativity.
I never tried to lose a game. I never told the girls ‘let’s go out and lose this game.’
Five years seems like a long time, but it’s not. I went back Bradley Central and saw a kid I taught lessons to when he was 10. Now he’s a senior and about to go play college ball. That’s the time it takes for those changes to show up.”

State of the
program

“When I first got here, we were 5-23 and now we’re 17-15. I think the program was heading in the right direction.
As a coach, you want to put your team to be in position to win in the future. Right now, with the way the program is, we’re trying to set it up like the programs around us who have been successful. Like Cannon County, like Livingston Academy. We’ve had a former player Lauren Wilkinson coaching the fourth-grade AAU team, I coach the seventh-grade team and my assistant Eden Fann coaches the sixth-graders.”

Looking forward

“Hopefully they can find somebody who gets it going in the right direction. I wish them the best of luck in that. It’s been 16 years since the last winning season here.”

His favorite wins

“I would give a top three. The biggest one was at White County. It has a special place in my heart because my mentor lost his final game at White County in 1993. After that game, you see all those Warren County fans in the Sparta gym cheering in the corner and I looked at my assistant coach and said, ‘This is just something you don’t see often.’
The second would be the one over Cannon County last season at home. We beat a team which has been to the state tournament in three of the last four years. The third would be the win over Cookeville in the 2011 district tournament that earned us a home game in the regional tournament.
Those were the biggest three wins. The five-game winning streak over Cookeville was awesome too and the two Christmas tournament championships tickled me.”

Where he
thought he failed

“I wish we could’ve done a better job uniting the county programs. I may have could have done that a different way.
We also struggled with free throws and I think that goes back to the feeder programs. We have to do a better job developing basic fundamentals at the lower levels – setting a basic screen, hitting free throws and making layups. By the time you get to ninth grade, those should be known. We spent so much time teaching those things though, but when you don’t have control of your feeder program, it’s hard to go work on that stuff.
I also thought I could’ve done better communicating with parents. Where I was at before in Florida, you never saw the parents. I never really developed a great line of communication with parents because I wasn’t used to it.
Do I think we could’ve done better here? Yeah. Do I think we could’ve done worse? Yeah.”

His legacy

“Off the court, it will just be making the kids mine, really accepting them as mine. I took them to ball games and out to eat. I always told them they could cut my hair, shave my hair or color my hair  if they won a game.
I hope my legacy is when these Little Pioneer League kids get up to the high school they’ve really bought into basketball. That’s not just girls because there were boys too and I was trying to organize boys AAU too.
It also is in the class room. We had a 3.72 GPA as a team this year.
On the court,  we produced an atmosphere of winning. One of the biggest legacies was starting to win the close game. We won close at White County, against Stone Memorial and at DeKalb County this year. The first year we blew double-digit leads in the first quarter, but now we’ve gotten our players to take ownership.”

Future plans

“Me and Amy are currently having fun with track. She’s an avid runner and I try to run. I’m just not very good at running. She’s really been the best part of all this. She supports me and there’s nobody quite like her.
We’ve been told we can keep our teaching positions, but at the end of the day I’m a basketball coach. If there’s opportunities, I’ll look. Coach K at Duke could call me tomorrow, but I doubt it.
Maybe I’ve had my last game as a coach or maybe this will be the springboard to something new and great.”