Former GCA basketball standout Kyle Stidom has coached the boys at Front Range Christian High School in Colorado the past three seasons.
Submitted photo
When it comes to leaps of faith, Kyle Stidom doesn’t mess around.
In May 2019, Stidom, then 25, packed his things and drove 1,100 miles west to Littleton, Colorado, then-home to his best friend during their years at Taylor University.
Stidom, a 2012 graduate of Greenwood Christian Academy who scored 2,059 career points for the Cougars’ boys basketball team, didn’t have a job lined up in Littleton. Moreover, he knew virtually nothing about the city of 46,000 residents, a southern suburb of Denver, which meant Stidom’s immediate future was essentially a blank slate.
Exciting, yes, but extremely challenging, too.
“It was kind of a move of faith and about new beginnings,” Stidom said. “I came out here, fell in love with the place and met my wife here. It’s just become, like, my place.”
Stidom has shoehorned a great deal into his 38 months as a Colorado resident.
He became boys hoops coach at Front Range Christian School, a K-12 of approximately 700-800 students, prior to the 2019-2020 season. It wasn’t long before some of his players — as well as other Front Range students — began working their version of matchmaking with Stidom and Kellie Dickinson, an AP English teacher at the school.
The couple dated, and was eventually married on October 17, 2020.
Their son, Crew, is 2 months old.
“I was taught to marry up, and she’s way better than me,” Stidom said, laughing. “It’s great. She’s awesome.”
Stidom’s first season at Fort Range was cut short due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Falcons ended with an 8-11 record and followed up with a 5-9 mark after the state shortened the 2020-21 regular season and altered the postseason format so that fewer teams qualified.
This past winter, Front Range turned a corner of sorts, going 12-9.
“My first two years, I was taking over a program that needed some love,” Stidom said. “Somebody to come in and make it a program that knows how to compete at a high level.
“I come from Indiana where basketball is king, and then you come to Colorado where basketball is not king. It’s a football state.”
Stidom had plenty of experience to draw upon after leading Greenwood Christian to a 32-11 record during his final two seasons in a Cougars uniform (2010-12). He then played at Taylor, amassing 1,553 career points and earning All-America honors for the Trojans as a senior (2015-16).
Brief coaching stints at the University of Indianapolis and Taylor, sandwiched around a year of sales for the Indiana Pacers, preceded Stidom’s move west.
In Littleton, his current full-time job is partner development and marketing director for Anchor Point IT Solutions.
Stidom’s time out west has been positively life-altering, yet he’s dealt with his share of heartache.
In December 2021, Stidom’s brother, Philip, passed away from cardiac arrest at the age of 41.
Last month, Stidom’s mother Charlotte, the woman who named her boy after 1975 Indiana Mr. Basketball and former University of Kentucky All-American guard Kyle Macy, lost her battle with cancer.
Charlotte Stidom, whose reverence for the Wildcats was rooted in her being born and raised in Morehead, Kentucky, was 60.
“Man, I’ve never seen anybody fight like she fought,” Stidom said. “But she got to meet my son, and hold him when he was a month old. After we left to go back to Colorado, she passed away a couple days later.”
With grief oftentimes comes growth.
Kyle Stidom is honoring his late mother the best way he knows how, and that’s by being the best person, husband and father possible.
“Watching her fight and seeing how many people she encouraged … that was my mom,” Stidom said. “I have moments where I break down or am angry, but I have a village of people out here to support me.”
