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Former Bears coach comes home

Jeff Spivey, an ex-basketball assistant, is the new athletic director at Central.

By DAVID MURPHY
Published April 19, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Things are moving fast for Jeff Spivey. He still has to sign some paperwork. He still has to find a house. And he still has to finish relocating from North Carolina to Florida.

In terms of certainty, this is about it: Central has turned to a familiar face to replace departing athletic director John Sedlack, and the face belongs to Spivey.

A former assistant basketball coach at Central who has close to 25 years of experience, Spivey left Spring Hill last year when his wife took a job in Charlotte. He had been on Sedlack's coaching staff since 1997, when he moved to Florida after six years of coaching women at Rice and Texas-San Antonio.

Spivey has never been an athletic director, but said he earned a master's degree in 2001 with the intent of eventually becoming one.

Whether he takes over the boys basketball program remains to be seen.

Sedlack, who had coached basketball at Central since its inception in 1988, accepted the head coaching job at River Ridge in mid March. When Sedlack was contemplating retirement a few years ago, he said his original plan was to continue to serve as athletic director while having Spivey succeed him on the court.

"Obviously," Sedlack said, "that's not the way it played out."

But there is a chance Spivey will take over the team Sedlack is leaving. Spivey said that he would be "fired up" to return to coaching, and that he has expressed his interest to Central principal Dennis McGeehan.

McGeehan, meanwhile, said Spivey becoming head coach is "a possibility" and that he will sit down with the new athletic director and discuss the basketball opening.

"The first thing was to get the athletic director in on board," McGeehan said.

Spivey, who had been substitute teaching in the Charlotte area while his wife worked as an information specialist for a textile company, said he first considered returning to Florida when he heard Sedlack was leaving.

"A light bulb went off," Spivey said.

Sedlack said he was not a factor in the hiring and that he did not want to give any impression of such. In fact, he said, he and Spivey have barely talked. Still, they are good friends and have been since meeting at a North Carolina State basketball camp in 1987.

"The saddest part of the whole thing is that John is leaving," said Spivey, who was the women's coach at Texas-San Antonio for two years. "He's a friend and a mentor and a colleague at the same time."

Spivey will make $2,468 as athletic director, according to the recent list of athletic supplements provided by the Hernando County School Board. He also will teach physical education.

[Last modified April 19, 2006, 02:19:10]