A roundtable of former coaches is one of the items planned for the 2020 IBCA Clinic. This year’s panel features a trio of coaches – Charles Mair, Dave Nicholson and Virgil Sweet – who will offer their expertise on building programs that stand the test of time.
Here is more info on each of the panelists.
Charles Mair
Charles Mair posted a 465-289 record in 36 seasons as a varsity girls’ basketball coach, including a 126-28 record in six seasons from 2011-17 at Princeton Community High School.
It was with the Tigers that Mair guided Jackie Young, the 2016 Indiana Miss Basketball who set the state’s career scoring record with 3,268 points, later starred at Notre Dame and was the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2019 WNBA Draft by the Las Vegas Aces. At Princeton, Mair’s teams had a 53-game winning streak over two seasons and won the 2015 Class 3A state championship with a 30-1 record.
“As a coach, I was very fortunate to be able to coach somebody like Jackie,” Mair told the Evansville Courier & Press when he retired in 2017. “Jackie is just an unbelievable, down-to-earth individual. She just played the game the right way. She practiced hard and what set her apart is she wanted to make her teammates better.”
Mair previously coached at North Posey, compiling a 339-261 ledger in 30 seasons with the Vikings. During his tenure in Poseyville, he survived a brain aneurism that erupted during a game against Evansville Mater Dei on Dec. 14, 1987. He had brain surgery immediately after and does not remember the 3½ weeks that followed. Mair missed the rest of 1987-88 season, but he was back on the sideline for the 1988-89 campaign and strived to teach his players how to overcome adversity through sport.
“Hopefully I taught them something over the years,” he told the newspaper. “But they taught me far more than I taught them.”
Mair, 67, is a 1971 graduate of Owensville High School (now part of Gibson Southern), where he played basketball and baseball. He went on to Kentucky Wesleyan College, where he played basketball for one season, baseball for three seasons and earned a bachelor’s degree in social studies in 1975. He later earned a master’s degree from the University of Evansville in 1980.
Mair was a boys’ basketball assistant for two seasons at New Harmony, then coached the North Posey girls for 30 seasons before stepping down in 2009. Two years later, he returned to coaching at Princeton and had the greatest on-court success of his career with the Tigers. Mair’s teams at both schools won eight sectionals, two regionals, one semi-state and the one state title. His 465 victory total stands eighth on Indiana’s girls basketball career coaching list.
He remains a teacher at Princeton, instructing classes in economics and government, and is the self-described “mayor of Owensville.”
Mair and his wife, Debbie, are parents of two adult children – Ashley and McKenzie.
Dave Nicholson
Dave Nicholson was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 after he put together a 402-171 record in a 25-season coaching career at New Ross, Darlington, Benton Central and Noblesville.
His teams averaged more than 16 victories per season, posted three undefeated varsity regular seasons, captured championships in five different conferences and won 11 sectionals. Along the way, he was named an IBCA District 3 Coach of the Year in 1981, 1984 and 1986.
In addition, Nicholson received 13 other additional Coach of the Year awards, coached an Indiana All-Star, coached NBA player and served as an assistant coach for the 1986 Indiana All-Stars. He also served on the IBCA Board of Directors in 1979-80 and as IBCA president in 1982-83.
Nicholson is a 1959 graduate of Vallonia High School (now part of Brownstown Central), where he played varsity basketball for three seasons and was part of a 28-student senior class. He matriculated to Indiana State, receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1965 and a master’s degree in 1968.
Nicholson began his coaching career as an assistant coach for one season at Brook (now part of South Newton). He then became head coach at New Ross (now part of Southmont) for two seasons, Darlington (now part of North Montgomery) for two seasons and Benton Central for five seasons.
At Darlington, his Indians won the school’s only sectional championship while posting a pair of undefeated regular seasons. He also “doubled up” in one of those seasons by guiding a “B” team to an unbeaten record. At Benton Central, his Bison captured the first two sectional crowns in program history.
Nicholson’s greatest success came at Noblesville, where his teams posted a 255-114 record, went undefeated in the 1983-84 regular season and won eight sectionals in 16 years – all played at Carmel – that concluded with the 1990-91 season (1981, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 1990 and 1991). The 1981 title was the Millers’ first since 1964.
Since retiring from coaching, Nicholson has served as an analyst for locally televised games for the past 28 seasons. He also has served on the board of directors for the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame for nearly 30 years and had a two-year term as the IBHOF president.
Nicholson was inducted into the Hamilton County Basketball Hall of Fame in 2005, the Montgomery County Hall of Fame in 2014 and the Noblesville High School Hall of Fame in 2014.
He and his wife, Julia, have been married for 55 years. The couple has one son, Dan, who also was a successful high school basketball coach at Lebanon, and two grandsons.
Virgil Sweet
Virgil Sweet has been a part of the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association since the group’s inception and an award is named after him, but not everyone may recall what an outstanding coach he was at Valparaiso High School. Sweet, who lives in Florida and will turn 93 on April 27, will be part of his 50th IBCA Clinic this year while serving on the panel for the IBCA Coaches’ Round Table.
Sweet is a 1945 graduate of Covington High School, where he played basketball on a team that reached the Indianapolis Semi-State and lost 39-38 to Rushville as a senior. He initially went to Butler and played one year of football for Tony Hinkle, then transferred to Eastern Illinois and played football and baseball for the Panthers. He graduated from EIU in 1950 and later earned a master’s degree from Indiana University.
Sweet began his basketball coaching career as an assistant coach to Don Reichert for one season at Covington. Sweet became varsity coach for three seasons at Westville (Ill.) before moving to Valparaiso as the varsity coach from 1954-74. His Vikings won 296 games over those 20 seasons, going 48-6 in sectional contests, claiming 14 sectional titles – including 11 in a row – and twice reached the final eight of the state tournament.
In 23 seasons as a varsity coach, including the three years at Westville, Sweet’s teams won 342 games.
Sweet’s teams at Valparaiso were noted for their excellent free-throw shooting, largely because of 20-step system that became known as the “Valparaiso Free-Throw Method.” His 1963-64 squad shot .792 for the season, then a national high school record. He coached two high school All-Americans, 54 players who played college basketball and 16 players who became coaches. Sweet was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987.
After retiring as a coach, Sweet was chairman of the Valparaiso physical education department and served as the IBCA executive director from 1977 through 1984 after assisting Marion Crawley with the group for a year. He then retired from teaching and moved to Florida, where he has had a tremendously successful second career in real estate.
“Coach Sweet is the single most influential person in the history of Viking basketball,” Skip Collins, a former player for Sweet and later the VHS coach from 1976-89, told The Times of Northwest Indiana in December 2011. “VHS basketball, mediocre at best when he arrived, has enjoyed consistent success over the succeeding (60-plus) years.”
Sweet’s wife of 47 years, Paralee, passed away in 1999. They had two daughters, Shari and Sandy, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Sweet remains active, regularly playing tennis, and Helen Parks has been his companion for the past 11 years.
