Finding the right fit: New Marauders hoops coach finally gets his team

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FORTVILLE — Back in March, while preparing his team for the regional round of the Class 4A basketball tournament, Ben Rhoades didn’t know he was getting an up-close-and-personal look at his future team.

Rhoades, then an assistant at Ben Davis, spent time before the March 10 regional in Southport scouting one of his team’s possible regional finals opponents, the Mt. Vernon Marauders.

He watched the Marauders’ final five games of the regular season so he’d know what to expect should the Giants and Marauders both advance.

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Both teams lost in their respective regional semifinals, but the time scouting wasn’t wasted for Rhoades, who was announced as the new head coach of the Marauders on May 21.

“When this was open, right away, I had written a scouting report, I had watched five games,” Rhoades said. “I had kind of recently watched them play, so right away I knew that they had three or four seniors coming back. I had already watched what was going on there, and I can still remember saying, ‘they have a lot of really skilled players.’”

Mt. Vernon had recently hired another coach from Ben Davis, Mike Kirschner, to lead their football program. When word that Marauders basketball coach Travis Daugherty was resigning got out, Kirschner contacted administrators at Mt. Vernon and Rhoades.

“I’m so excited about Ben,” Kirschner said. “He wanted to be a head coach for so long. When they said Travis got out, I told them, ‘I’ve got a guy.’ You can interview who you want, but I’ve got this guy.”

Rhoades had been picky up until that point. Despite a long history of assistant coaching positions, he was looking for the right place to take on his first head coaching role. He didn’t want to take just any job.

He said he hadn’t applied for many positions over the past decade. He was happy at Ben Davis, despite having the desire to have his own team.

But after talking to Kirschner and other people at Mt. Vernon, he knew where he wanted to be.

“I was looking for what I consider to be the right fit, whether it was a bigger school or a smaller school,” Rhoades said. “This has more of a community feel than I’ve had in the last few years. I could tell right away that this was going to be a fit for me.”

Rhoades, who went to Hagerstown High School and then Indiana University, spent his first 11 years after college at Perry Meridian. From there, he moved on to Franklin Central when Mark James, “one of the most respected coaches in Indiana,” Rhoades said, asked him to join his staff as a varsity assistant.

When James left for Ben Davis seven years ago, the school told him he could bring one assistant with him.

Again, James asked Rhoades to join him. Together, they won several sectional titles and a Class 4A state championship in 2017.

“What makes him unique is that most guys like him won’t be an assistant and wait their turn; they just want to get out and do it right away,” James said. “He’s waited his turn, paid his dues, learned how to do things right, I think. He’s experienced everything, from scouting report stuff, to travel team stuff, to middle school stuff, to practice stuff. He’s a heck of a guy, he’s a good worker, really good knowledge of the game.

“I’ll be really surprised if he doesn’t do well at Mt. Vernon.”

The Marauders’ new coach was a varsity assistant and the head JV coach for the Giants. It gave him a chance to have his own team, which was something he always wanted.

He taught Earth science while at Ben Davis and will be teaching health at Mt. Vernon, with three or four classes per day.

In addition, he is working closely with Kirschner in the weight room to try to develop not just his basketball program or Kirschner’s football program, but all of the athletics teams at Mt. Vernon.

The coaches will be offering an extra period before school begins each day to help more students get involved, whether they are in a sport or not.

That’s an exciting aspect for school administrators. The Marauders won their first 4A boys basketball sectional in school history last year, and heading into the hiring process, the hiring committee was looking for someone who could continue the path of success and push the team even further.

They noticed that the team got pushed around a bit in the regional loss in March, something Rhoades also noticed when scouting the team.

The focus on the weight room is yet another step forward for Mt. Vernon.

“We believe that as a school, it’s integral that your football and basketball programs have cohesion,” Athletic Director Brandon Ecker said. “The cohesion that we’re going to get from two guys who have worked together for years, that’s going to be important to drive our school culture and have a trickle-down effect to our other athletics programs.”

The first full month of his tenure as head coach was a busy one for Rhoades. He met the returning players the week they got out of school, and the team has been working out throughout June.

In mid June, he hosted elementary camps for incoming first- to seventh-graders, seeing about 80 students participate. In late June, he hosted an eighth- and ninth-grade camp, which had about 30 students attend.

All month, the Marauders met for three-hour workouts that started at 6 a.m. each day. That’s something Rhoades has been thrilled with, seeing his new players buy in and put in the work even in the early hours in the summer.

“Coming from Ben Davis, I think the players respect that more than I thought they would,” Rhoades said. “It’s obviously a different level of basketball, but I believe that if you take care of the basketball and you’re making good decisions, you’ve taught your players and your players know what you expect, I don’t care if you’re playing at the biggest school in the state or you’re playing at a 1A school, those are the things I think cause success across basketball in general.”

The 40-year-old said he was looking for a place that he could stay a long time and even possibly be his final coaching stop.

So far, his time at Mt. Vernon has confirmed what he thought several months ago — Fortville is the right fit for him and his family, which includes a 2-year-old daughter and his wife, an occupational therapist.

“This is what I want to do. This is what I’ve wanted to do since I became a teacher and became a coach,” Rhoades said. “I’m more thrilled about the opportunity that I have, meeting all the great people that have been here. It’s made me know that this was the right choice. I feel welcome.”

Rhoades inherits a team that finished last season 15-10 with a sectional championship.

His former coach and mentor said he’s happy to see Rhoades finally get his opportunity to take the reins of a program.

“He was a great right-hand man. He was like an associate head coach,” James, now the head coach at Perry Meridian, said. “Those guys are hard to find, guys you can trust and who do all the things right.

“I think Mt. Vernon got a steal. He’s sort of an unknown, but if you know anything about basketball in this area, you know who he is. It’s his time.”