Stepping Up: Indiana Coach to Lead Boys and Girls Basketball Teams

When tasked with replacing a coach, looking to a familiar face is a logical first step in an athletic director’s search process. In many cases, bringing a former coach back into the fold makes the leadership transition smoother for everyone and significantly reduces the number of growing pains along the way. Moreover, the return of a beloved bench boss can do wonders to rejuvenate a program.

In need of a new varsity girls basketball coach, Daleville (Indiana) High School (DHS) Athletic Director Josh Hutchens employed this strategy, and he knew exactly whom he wanted to approach as soon as the job came open.

“There was really no reason to search,” Hutchens said. “My initial thought was, if she’s able to do it, it’s going to work out and there wouldn’t be any reason to try and go find somebody else.”

There was just one problem: Hutchens’ top target was already committed to coaching a different team, the girls’ hardwood cohabitants, Daleville boys basketball.

Still, he wanted to at least talk about it. So he sat down with Ashley Fouch for a preliminary assessment of whether coaching both squads was even feasible. At the time, he had no idea how the game schedules would clash, how practice times would fit together or what feedback he would receive from DHS principal Eric Douglas. His primary concern was merely to “get the girls program to be like the boys.”

Fouch took 24 hours to digest the conversation before telling Hutchens she was interested. The next step was getting Douglas on board.

“We knew what it was going to be like if she was running the program,” Douglas said. “For us, it was, ‘we definitely want her to do it, but is she capable of it and is it the best thing for her?’ But after sitting down and talking with her and realizing that she’s got people around her who will support her and she’s willing to put the time in, it was a no-brainer. The only thing we’re regretting now is that we didn’t make that choice earlier.”

Basically, Hutchens and Douglas were asking Fouch to replace her own replacement, as the 31-year-old previously spent three seasons in charge of the girls team from 2017 to 2020, which included a sectional championship in her farewell campaign. Following one year at Whiteland (Indiana) High School, Fouch was re-hired at Daleville, where she became the fifth woman in state history to coach varsity boys basketball.

But being the “familiar face” is barely even a footnote in the description of her value as a coach. In just four total seasons at Daleville, Fouch’s influence has made an impression that extends far beyond her players and school personnel.

“Everybody on the team, the parents, the community – everybody’s excited and ready to get started,” said Hutchens. “It’s great. It’s a great feeling, it’s a great buzz to be around. And that’s just the immediate impact. Obviously, the other part of that is on the court and the respect and trust that the players have for her. When (the girls) step on that court now, they have confidence; they’re getting coached well, and they’re getting the best chance to win the game. They know that she’s got their back and that she’s going to do the right things for the team.”

Fouch’s infectious program culture – a word she hates to use – can be summed up in three words: grit, chemistry and joy. She knows that at a small school like Daleville, placed in the Indiana High School Athletic Association’s 1A classification, immensely talented players come at a premium. But she also knows that a group that loves the game and each other and refuses to be outworked is oftentimes enough to bridge the gap against high-powered opponents.

“It’s something that we preach and talk about every single day,” Fouch said. “We might lose by two, and I’m okay with that. But we’re not going to get trounced on because our kids are going to run through brick walls for each other and for their coaches and for this community. We build that from the start. I think (the boys team) showed that last year and I think that’s why there’s such a buzz around them right now. They’re fun to watch because they’re gritty. And once we have that with the girls, there’s going to be a buzz around them, too.”

As for the “joy” element, Fouch “(doesn’t) want anybody to be miserable” on her team, and views providing her players with a great experience among her top duties as a coach. “Most of the time, we’re having a good time, having fun. There’s joy in the fact that we get to be together every single day,” she said.

Aside from his report that announcing Fouch’s return brought an instantaneous spike in the number of girls coming out for this year’s team, Douglas recently got a firsthand look at just how strongly the roots of Fouch’s culture have taken hold.

As he walked in the school doors around 6 a.m. one October morning, the principal heard the unmistakable sound of bouncing basketballs coming from the gym. Upon investigation, he found roughly 20 boys basketball players taking part in a voluntary open practice with no one from the coaching staff in sight. The official first day of practice for boys basketball in Indiana is November 7, yet there they were in a full sweat, enjoying the game and the grind at one of the most unenjoyable times of the day.

“The team building that she does, to me, is second to none,” Douglas said. “I’ve seen it happen when she came in the first time with the girls, and now with the boys. And it’s already begun again (with the girls). (The girls have) already made a 90-degree turn (and are) heading in the right direction.”

Although only one girl – then a freshman, now a senior – remains from Fouch’s first stint with the girls team, a get-to-know-you phase for the current players won’t be necessary. One of the incoming freshmen, who Fouch referred to as her “mini-me,” started training with Fouch when she was in fourth grade. Another player frequently crossed paths with her new coach while following her brother on last year’s boys team. And virtually all the other players have been evaluated from afar by Fouch to varying degrees, as she live-streamed as many Daleville girls games as she could over the past two seasons.

“I never was not connected in some way with Daleville girls basketball,” Fouch said. “Those are my kids, and I was always going to be checking in on them. And I’m dealing with some of the same parents that I dealt with last year or previously, so I’ve already built connections that way. And again, it’s a small town, so everybody’s connected. I’m not starting from scratch.”

There is overwhelming evidence that Fouch is a hand-in-glove fit with both the boys and girls basketball programs at Daleville. But how is she going to pull it off?

As much as her willingness to make extraordinary sacrifices for the student-athletes may make her seem like a Daleville alum, Fouch actually grew up about 12 miles away in Muncie, where she starred for the Muncie Central basketball and softball teams (and later for the basketball team at Taylor University in nearby Upland, Indiana). Many of her family members still live there, and Fouch will be relying on them while she navigates marathon nights in the gym over the next four months.

“I have two dogs that are going to hate my guts,” she said. “But I had to make sure my family was okay with it and make sure they could come to my house and take care of my stuff when I’m gone. Otherwise, I couldn’t do it. They were the first people I asked, ‘am I crazy for doing this?’ And they said, ‘yes, you are crazy for doing this. But there’s never a time like right now, so you need to do it.’”

Of course, she also had to run the “coach-sharing” idea by the boys, and as expected, their collective response further reflected the bedrock of their coach’s leadership.

“I would have never done it if I didn’t feel like I had the support of the boys and the amount of respect that we both have earned for each other,” Fouch said. “I’m super confident because they’re backing me, and the community is backing me with both situations. If I didn’t have that, there’s no way that I would even consider doing this.”

One aspect that undoubtedly made that conversation easier was that there weren’t many conflicts between the boys’ and girls’ contest schedules. And the few existing wrinkles, Hutchens said, were quickly ironed out thanks to the understanding of the other member schools in the Mid-Eastern Conference.

Juggling practice appearances could prove a little more difficult for Fouch, but she believes she went out and found the perfect pair of assistant coaches on the girls side to help counteract any impending challenges.

Joe Rench, a fixture in the Daleville community who has spent time coaching the boys and girls programs, originally declined Fouch’s request to join her but changed his mind after a persuasive conversation over Mexican food. Fouch said her coaching philosophy aligns closely with that of Rench’s, and that he has been around the girls enough to know “where the standards are” when she’s away.

Complementing Rench on the bench is Emi Isom, a former player on Fouch’s 2020 sectional championship team and a 2022 Daleville graduate. Isom knows a number of Fouch’s current players very well due to her age, which gives her the ability to provide insight that would otherwise be hard to obtain.

Together, the two assistants bring a valuable mix of experience and relatability and form a tandem more than capable of running practices in the head coach’s absence.

“It’s just two different angles that give me great leverage as a head coach,” Fouch said. “I don’t trust very easily when it comes to my basketball programs, but I trust them. It makes me feel good knowing those two will be able to steer the ship when I can’t be there.”

It’s a safe bet that the vast majority of high school basketball coaches in the country would shy away from the challenge Ashley Fouch will take on for the 2022-23 season. In fact, she admitted that if she was in any of their shoes, she wouldn’t do it either. The reason? There’s no place like Daleville.

“My passion, my purpose lies within this school,” Fouch said. “And if I can make it better in some way, then I’m going to do it. I have to. There are going to be times where it’s really exhausting, and I know that because one season is exhausting as it is. But there’s something that also just drives me because this is the place that I love. It’s sort of like the love that you have for your family, it never really dies. You just keep going for your family all the time, and it’s the same way here. This is my family. This is my community.”