MaxPreps Girls Basketball Coach of the Year: Canyon's Joe Lombard

March 5 was a good day for Joe Lombard.

After 33 years coaching girls basketball in Texas, on that day his Canyon (Texas) Eagles gave him his 1,100th win against just 98 losses.

And that 1,100th win just happened to be the one that gave Canyon the Texas 4A state championship – and that championship just happened to be his 15th.

Oh, and it was his birthday.

"It was a fun year," says Lombard, who started coaching girls basketball at Nazareth High School in 1978 and is the MaxPreps Girls Basketball Coach of the Year, "and it was unexpected."

It is true that Lombard didn't think his chances of being good were all that great in preseason, as only one starter returned. But then again, Lombard is a guy who has 15 state titles without a single recognizable Division I star on his roster.

When he started out at Nazareth, though, it would have taken a wizard to have predicted his tremendous success. Lombard had grown up in Indiana and played college basketball at Wayland Baptist in Texas, where the Flying Queens were one of the early powers in the women's game. But Lombard had no sense of the sport – "I had never seen a girls game," he says. And besides, prior to 1978, the girls in Texas played a six-person version that was then popular in several states.

After graduating, Lombard interviewed for several teaching jobs, and a boys basketball coaching position, and was even offered some. "I think it was one of those God things," says Lombard. "I did a couple interviews for boys jobs, but they just didn't feel right."

Then Nazareth, the defending 1A state champion, came into the picture. "They were desperate," he says, and they took a chance on the inexperienced young coach.

Good call. The Swiftettes promptly went on a 68-game winning streak and took the next two state championships.

After seven years at Nazareth, and six Texas titles, Lombard moved 45 miles down the road to Canyon. "It just felt like the right time," he says. And though the Eagles had won six state championships in the past, they were in a down cycle.

It took Lombard four years to get Canyon back to the state title game. Then, in 1992, the Eagles won the first of their nine under the guidance of Lombard, the last of which came this year, capping a 38-0 season and a No. 18 ranking in the final MaxPreps Xcellent 25 Girls Basketball Rankings.

So does Lombard have a magical system, some secret offense, a special defense? Not really. "I'm a man-to-man coach, mainly in the halfcourt," he says. "Offensively, we do fast break, but teams we play would say we're patient.

"Some years we go three-out, two-in, but the last two years we've been running dribble-drive motion (which is four-out, one-in)," he says. "I have a passion for the game – I study it."

And that study has resulted in a flexibility rare in programs that have long runs of success. This past season, for example, Lombard played 11 or 12 girls. "I don't think I've ever done that before," he says. "I rotated six girls through two post spots – I'd play whoever was hot."

Obviously, Lombard is doing more than just warming his seat on the bench, and the 58-year-old has no plans to step aside soon – but he can envision the day when that might happen. "I'm not going to do the Joe Paterno thing," he says. His son Tate is an assistant at Stevenville High School and one day wants to be a head coach, and Joe could see himself helping Tate.

And if Tate listens to his old man, expect Stevenville to suddenly start winning state championships too.