Quinn is in

Spain Park Athletics Director Patrick Kellogg didn’t have far to look to find the Jaguars’ next boys basketball coach. He was already sitting on the bench.

Assistant coach Donnie Quinn was selected from among some 50 candidates to replace Neal Barker, who was not retained as coach after compiling a 79-48 record over four seasons.

“When we went through this process, we were looking for somebody that was for Spain Park, for Hoover City Schools,” Kellogg said. “Just to sit down and listen to him talk about not just about basketball but kids and learning, I think we have the perfect fit. The other people in 7A are in a lot of trouble.”

Spain Park Principal Ken Jarnagin was equally excited. 

“I don’t know if there is anybody we could find that has more basketball savvy,” Jarnagin said. “We’re not going to be outsmarted on the coaching side of things. On a personal note, if I had a kid coming through high school, I would make him play basketball, whether he is on the bench or not, just to be around Donnie Quinn.”

There may not be a more talented roster in the state. 

 “I’m definitely looking forward to seeing what I can do with this group of guys,” Quinn said. 

The Jaguars posted a 24-6 record last season and were among the ASWA Class 7A top 10 most of the season, rising as high as No. 2. But an upset loss to Vestavia Hills in the opening round of the area tournament — on a four-point play in the final seconds — prevented the Jaguars from advancing to the regionals.

The Jags played that game — and another of their losses — without Austin Wiley. The 6-9 junior-to-be is rated by ESPN as a 5-star player, the 11th best player in his class nationally. Teammate Jamal Johnson is no slouch. Another rising junior, Johnson is a 6-4 combo guard who holds offers from Auburn and Texas A&M, among others, and has drawn interest from Alabama — no wonder, since he is the son of former Tide star Buck Johnson. Interestingly, Wiley has Auburn bloodlines. His father is former Tiger basketball player Aubrey Wiley, and his mother is former Auburn star and Olympian Vicki Orr Wiley. He has offers from Auburn, Alabama, UAB and Mississippi State.

That’s just the top end of the Jaguars’ roster. There are other talented players in the mix for 2015-16. And as Quinn said, it’s the other players who’ll help the Jaguars win a state championship.

“There are definitely some high expectations,” Quinn said. “In the back of your mind, you know what you have to accomplish … but you know that going in.”

Quinn’s experience means there won’t be anything he hasn’t seen before. 

The 60-year-old Quinn, who also assisted Spain Park girls coach Mike Chase, has a varied history of coaching both boys and girls — and women — players in his 30-plus years of coaching.

Quinn coached boys basketball in Louisiana for 15 years, winning a state title. He then spent the next dozen years coaching females. He was a women’s assistant at Louisiana-Monroe from 1995-2000. 

He led Hoover’s girls to Class 6A state championships in 2010 and 2012. He posted a 157-16 mark in five years leading the Lady Buccaneers.

From there, he accepted an assistant position to University of Alabama women’s coach Wendell Hudson. When Hudson was let go after the 2012-2013 season, Quinn was out of a job, too, and landed at Spain Park as the lead assistant for both the boys and girls teams.

“I feel like I’m pretty equipped as far as psychologically dealing with different personalities. That’s the thing; I don’t think it’s that much about dealing with Xs and Os — I think all the coaches out there have a good base of how to coach basketball … it’s about dealing with the personalities, it’s managing the people — the players, the parents, all at the same time is the hard part.” 

From coaching at inner-city schools to private schools, from boys to girls and at the college level, an experience factor hard to match. And simply being in the business for 30-plus years has an effect too.

“The way I was coaching and the things I was doing when I was back in my 30s compared to now … There was a lot of wasted time and wasted energy on things that I didn’t learn how to pick my battles. Everything was a battle.  Now some things you just know you don’t want to fight. Not worth fighting because the results aren’t worth the fight. 

“You learn what things to eliminate, what things really work and what things don’t… experience tells you that. [There’s] just no way to know those things unless you live through them. There’s something to ‘life begins at 50’ — start to figure out a lot of the mistakes you made and now you can really enjoy it and sit back and relax a little bit because you’re not wasting your time that when you’re younger you don’t know they don’t matter.”

Katie Turpen contributed to this report.