Whiteland girls basketball coach Shipp resigns

<p>One of Whiteland’s favorite sons is leaving the nest.</p><p>Kyle Shipp, a star athlete for the Warriors in the late 1990s and the school’s girls basketball coach for the past eight seasons, is resigning to take a job as the assistant athletic director at Shelbyville. That hire is expected to get official approval at a board meeting tonight.</p><p>Shipp had expressed a desire to relocate nearer to Hope, where his family is building a new home this summer. He had not necessarily anticipated moving into an administrative job, but the process just wound up steering him there.</p><p>&quot;They had the job posted as boys basketball and assistant AD, kind of a combo,&quot; Shipp said. &quot;Going through a couple of different interview processes really just kind of allowed me to evaluate what’s really going on and what direction we would like to go — and with my young family, it sounds crazy, but as an assistant AD you probably don’t spend as many hours as you do as a head coach, with the feeder program and travel program and coaching and practices and all that type of stuff.&quot;</p><p>Whiteland athletic director Ken Sears, who is retiring this summer, says that the final decision on Shipp’s successor will be in the hands of incoming AD David Edens.</p><p>Shipp was a star athlete at Whiteland before graduating in 1999, earning Johnson County football player of the year honors as a senior. He returned to his alma mater to teach and coach, posting an overall record of 90-99 with the Warrior girls.</p><p>His best run of success came from 2015-19, when the team was 59-38 and produced an Indiana All-Star in Mackenzie Blazek, one of the 10 leading rebounders in state history. Whiteland was 1-20 the year before Blazek’s arrival and won a school-record 19 games in 2017-18, her senior season. The last five seasons mark the first time that Whiteland has reached double digits in victories for five straight years.</p><p>A young Whiteland team was 11-14 this past winter, and four starters will return from that squad.</p><p>&quot;One of the major things that I would kind of hang my hat on is that we were able to build a program,&quot; Shipp said. &quot;It took us a little bit of time to get rolling — for those first couple of years the cupboard was pretty bare and we kind of got it rolling. … And I think it’s going to continue.&quot; </p>