Josh Sabol surveys the atmosphere at Gainbridge Fieldhouse prior to the Class 4A state final against Noblesville. Sabol resigned his post as Franklin’s girls basketball coach on Tuesday.
Daily Journal file photo
With three starters and most of the roster set to return from a Franklin girls basketball team that just powered its way to a spot in the Class 4A state championship game, few would have suspected that Josh Sabol planned to spend next winter doing anything else but coaching the Grizzly Cubs again.
Family, however, comes first.
Less than two months after a wildly successful 28-2 season, Sabol is stepping down after six years at the helm.
“My time now needs to be focused on my two daughters,” Sabol said in a statement after informing his players Tuesday morning. “My oldest daughter (Sophia) is involved in many activities and will be going to college in two years. I don’t want to miss a thing. I love her too much to have any regrets. My youngest daughter (Suri) is at a fun age where she is really starting to get excited about sports, including basketball. We watched all the men’s and women’s NCAA tournament games together and she had so many questions about the players, set plays, different defenses, etc. She even yelled at the TV a few times. I don’t want to miss another moment.”
“He sacrificed a lot,” Franklin athletic director Bill Doty said. “Coaching now is hard. … It is year-round — no matter what the sport, not just basketball. Any sport, it’s a year-round thing, and it’s hard to do, and it’s hard to manage your own time, your personal time and your family, and still give everything you can to the program that you’re coaching. It’s hard to do; it really is. So my hat’s off to him for what he’s accomplished.”
Sabol was 39-55 in his first four seasons with the Grizzly Cubs, often derailed by injuries to key players, before breaking through with a 22-3 campaign in 2020-21. That club, led by Indiana Junior All-Star Kuryn Brunson and a talented freshman class that put three girls in the starting lineup, made a somewhat surprising run to the Class 4A semistate before falling to Brownsburg.
The team faced much higher expectations and more pressure coming into this past winter, especially after the arrival of Martinsville transfers Ashlyn Traylor and Adelyn Walker.
“That adds a whole new dynamic,” Doty said. “This year could have went south early. … Making sure those roles are accepted and they play for each other, not just for themselves, obviously (Sabol has) done a great job at that.
“I’m just appreciative of how he handled himself on the sidelines, how he handled different situations, how he went about his business in a professional manner. That, to me, is one of his legacies — Josh was a professional and really worked at his craft.”
Franklin handled life under the microscope well, winning its first 16 games before suffering its lone regular-season loss, a 42-40 overtime setback against Westfield at the Hall of Fame Classic. The Grizzly Cubs bounced back with 12 more victories in a row, a streak that carried them through the sectional, regional and semistate and into Gainbridge Fieldhouse for a date with Noblesville and UConn recruit Ashlynn Shade.
Early foul trouble for Traylor, named an Indiana All-Star after the season, changed the tone of the game very early, and the Grizzly Cubs spent most of the night playing from behind in a 76-52 defeat.
That loss capped one of the more successful two-year stretches in Johnson County basketball history.
“Those runs don’t happen that often,” Doty said. “That’s a generational team this year, and to watch these last couple of years and to see him manage through everything — there’s a lot of good basketball players in the program, and to keep everyone, to make sure everybody knows their role and accepts their role, and goes out and practices hard, plays hard day in and day out, that’s a testament to the coaching staff. It’s a testament to the players, no doubt, and how they were raised and what they grew up understanding basketball to be — but at the same time, he deserves some credit there for sure.”
The run may not be over just yet. Though the Grizzly Cubs lose a pair of All-State players and 1,000-point scorers in Traylor and Brunson, two-year starters Erica Buening, Scarlett Kimbrell and Lauren Klem are still just halfway through high school and none of the players who came off the bench this past season are graduating.
Franklin figures to be a county and sectional favorite again next season, so it’s not surprising that Doty expects to have plenty of candidates lining up to coach this team going forward.
“This is going to be a high-profile job,” he said. “(Brunson and Traylor) leave a lot, but we have a lot returning. We’re going to be good, and we’re going to be good for a while … This is a program that has some winning years coming, and expectations are still high.
“We’re going to take our time, and we’re going to go after the best fit for Franklin girls basketball, whoever that may be.”
