Basketball only a tool in life of Young3 min read

Head Coach Greg Young instructs his West Sedona School girls basketball team during a practice in November. Young, originally from North Carolina, played basketball and baseball in high school and is currently a minister at a local church.
Tom Hood/Larson Newspapers

It takes a special kind of person to coach middle school girls basketball.

Caring, understanding and patience are three qualities one must have to coach at this level, not to mention the ability to laugh when things just don’t go the way they were planned.

When first-year West Sedona School Head Coach Greg Young and his family moved to Sedona in 2003, he probably never pictured himself pacing the sidelines in a shirt and tie leading the next generation of kids using a tool such as basketball.

Originally from Hendersonville, N.C., Young attended West Henderson High School and graduated in 1984.

Young lettered in two sports at West Henderson, playing center for the basketball team in the winter and first base for the baseball team in the spring.

Although sports, especially basketball, ran through every ounce of that community like a river, Young always had a much greater purpose in life.

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“I was always so focused on church work and serving God,” Young said in an interview Tuesday, Dec. 21. “I knew at a young age what I wanted to be.”

A North Carolina State fan, Young watched David Thompson and the Wolfpack win a national title while growing up, but he also favored the Tar Heels and a young player named Michael Jordan.

“I grew up in ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference] country, and Tobacco Road has some of the best basketball in America,” Young said.

Young attended Gardner Webb College and graduated in 1988 with a degree in religion, then moved on to Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., to become a minister and graduated in 1992.

During his time at the seminary, Young and his wife Debbie married and the couple now have three children: 15-year-old Skye, 12-year-old Anne and 11-year-old Jack.

Young got his first calling from three separate churches in Maine so he packed up the car and left everything he had known to begin his life mission.

For 10 years, Young served three churches and its congregations from East Baldwin, the Sabago Center and at Denmark.

Eventually, Young’s parents retired to Sedona in 2002 and it wasn’t long before the Young family followed them to Arizona.

“I wanted my kids to be close to their grandparents and I wanted to move closer to them,” Young said.

The Young family had plenty of birthday parties, Christmas mornings and Thanksgiving turkeys over the next six years but on Dec. 5, 2009, Young’s mom Cherie passed away.

“I was glad we made this move. My kids, my family, were able to spend so much time with her,” Young said.

At the time, Young was an assistant coach at West Sedona, and he was unable to coach due to his mother’s passing, but now that it’s a year later, he’s receiving another chance.

“My son played with the athletic director’s son in a grasshopper basketball league,” Young said. “We made the connection and he asked me to coach the girls. I knew it was what I wanted to do.”

Currently, Young’s daughter Anne plays for the Wildcats. Skye is a sophomore at Sedona Red Rock High School, and Jack is in fifth grade.

Young is going on four years as the pastor at Camp Verde Christian Church and also has duties at a local mortuary in Sedona.

For now, Young will continue to spread the word on not only basketball, but the more important things in life to those 15 young girls playing basketball for the Wildcats.

As for the future, Young doesn’t know what is in store for him or his family, but he knows for sure he is in the right place.

“This basketball team, this community, it’s a part of my life. It is my way of giving back,” Young said.

Larson Newspapers

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