BARBERTON: One might wonder if father and son had ever discussed the possibility of this day.
The answer would be no. Not once.
The late Jack Greynolds Sr., one of the most winning high school basketball coaches in Ohio history, had a stroke in 1987. He lost the ability to speak or write when his son was just 20.
So as Jack Greynolds Jr. — trained by his iconic father at Barberton High School — embarked on his own high school coaching career, the two men never had the opportunity to muse about “what if” that path led him back home.
On Wednesday, the Barberton Board of Education hired the younger Greynolds as the new high school boys basketball coach, and this fall, he will lead his team onto a court called “Greynolds Floor” in his dad’s honor.
Jack Jr. is pretty sure Jack Sr. is smiling down on him.
While his dad was never able to vocalize how he felt about his son following in his footsteps, he found ways to express himself.
A gregarious man whose published photos made him recognizable to many strangers, he loved to sit on a mall bench while his wife shopped and wait for folks to stop and greet him. Then, wordlessly, he would pull from his pocket a box score clipped from the newspaper, showing whatever team his son was coaching.
“It was his way of saying he was proud of me,” Jack Jr. said.
Older residents who remember Barberton’s glory years as a perennial state contender in boys basketball may get a nostalgic chill hearing the name Jack Greynolds again.
Even the 1,200 current high school students who don’t know the history may recognize the name. In addition to the high school court, the Lake Anna YMCA has a Greynolds Gymnasium on the site where the elder Jack and his boys built a formidable 156-13 home record between 1969 and 1987.
His overall career winning percentage of .819 is the highest among the top 25 most winning high school boys basketball coaches in Ohio.
But Barberton Superintendent Patti Cleary said she can’t stress enough that Jack Jr. won the job on his own merits.
“We’re not hiring him because of his name,” she said. “We are hiring him because of all the applicants [there were 40] that we researched and interviewed, we felt he was the best coach we could get for our kids at this time.”
“And he’s not just a coach for the kids who are stars. He’s the right coach for kids who need basketball for other reasons,” she said.
Jack Jr. is a technician who “obviously has been playing and hearing about basketball his entire life ... but he also has a desire to make a difference in kids’ lives,” Cleary said. After hearing stories from parents of former students, “that’s really what made my mind up.”
The opening in Barberton came in early May when Ken Rector — the longest tenured coach of any sport in school history — announced his retirement after 20 years.
Just a couple of weeks earlier, Greynolds had announced he was leaving GlenOak High School.
He had coached the Golden Eagles from 2003 to 2010, and then again since 2012, compiling a 171-87 record and a trip to state in 2007, a stretch that also produced two NBA stars: center Kosta Koufos and guard CJ McCollum.
During that two-year break, Greynolds Jr. underwent two back surgeries and a hip replacement. He said he’s feeling better now than he has in years.
“But I think after 13 years there, I was kind of getting bored. I wanted a new challenge, so I thought I’d look for something else,” he said.
Greynolds, 50, said he had no idea Rector was retiring.
The timing was fate, and is playing into what Cleary called a “resurgence” in Barberton athletics.
The district has returned to the more challenging Suburban League, and in 2014, homegrown Tony Gotto was hired to coach varsity football, which sailed to a 7-3 record last year.
“Our teams are energized and we are being led by coaches who are Barberton graduates and really understand our kids and our community,” Cleary said.
Greynolds said he and wife Julie will move their children, freshman Elise and junior Jordan, to Barberton.
Jordan, who has been coached by his dad at GlenOak, will join his dad on the Barberton court.
“Jordan is excited,” Greynolds said. “He even used to say at GlenOak, ‘My heart beats green but my veins bleed purple.’ ”
Greynolds said he hasn’t given a lot of thought to what that first home game will be like for him and his son, surrounded by friends, family, former classmates, players his dad coached.
“I suppose it’s going to be emotional for me, but hopefully I’ve coached enough that I can separate from that” and get the job done, he said. “I know one thing. I’d better win that one.”
Greynolds has collected 353 wins in his career. He deliberately started small, he said, “because I wanted to work my way up to Division I. I wanted to learn at each level and work in all kinds of communities.”
He believes his experience in rural Rootstown, suburban Tallmadge, inner-city Akron Buchtel and Stark County’s GlenOak has given him the ability “to coach all kinds of different kids.”
And the lessons he wants to impart go beyond the game.
Basketball “teaches you a lot of things you have to know about life, things you have to put up with in the workforce, how to work with people you don’t get along, how to be a team to get something done,” he said.
It’s a philosophy he learned from his dad.
He also inherited his dad’s fiery temper, particularly when he’s frustrated with game officials. “I think that’s an actual gene they’ve discovered in us,” he said, chuckling.
If there is a difference between father and son, it’s in personality, Greynolds said.
“He was more outgoing than me,” he said. “I was voted ‘Most Shy’ in my senior year.”
But it was his dad’s confidence in him that gave him the courage to follow his dream.
When Jack Jr. had been offered his first coaching job at the age of 20, he overheard a conversation between his parents. They were sitting on the deck behind the family home. He was shooting baskets in the drive when a ball got away from him.
As he chased the ball to the side of the house, he overheard his mom questioning the coaching move, given her son’s introverted nature.
“He’ll be fine,” Jack Sr. reassured her. “I was the same way when I was his age.”
“I knew right then I could do this,” Jack Jr. said. “Two weeks later, Dad had his stroke and never spoke again. But I’ve never forgotten he said that. It motivates me every week.”
Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.