By PAUL STURM
C-T Sports Editor
psturm@cherryroad.com
One vacancy remains; Rucker, Cunningham now co-ADs
Multiple Chillicothe High School sports programs will have new leadership – one, as yet, undetermined – in the coming school year, mostly in the spring 2026 season. There also will be a change in who helps coordinate those programs.
Of the six CHS spring sports teams – baseball, boys’ and girls’ track-and-field, girls’ soccer, boys’ tennis, and boys’ golf – will be guided by new leaders, reports Lee Rucker, veteran CHS softball head coach and boys’ basketball assistant, who will combine with even-more-veteran now-former CHS boys’ soccer head coach and boys’ basketball assistant Tim Cunningham in handling the school’s athletic directorship from which Darren Smith has retired. In addition, there will be one fall-season change.
Two of the alterations are in the soccer programs are intertwined.
After four district championships, one appearance (2021) in the state-tournament quarterfinals, a 158-122-6 overall record, and only four losing campaigns in 14 seasons, Cunningham has relinquished the reins of the soccer Hornets back to the person from whom he received them, Shannon Grable.
Grable, who guided the Hornets to an 8-12 mark in the 2010 season and then the Lady Hornets to a 32-10 mark in 2018 and ’19, returned to the girls’ helm this past spring and went 7-12 with a highly-inexperienced squad. Now, he will pass that torch on a second time – this time to Angela Pope, who assisted with both genders’ programs this past school year. Kirsta Steinbeiser and Madison Busse were contracted at the July school board meeting to be the boys’ and girls’ teams assistants, respectively.
Adding a second (or third, to be technical) CHS head-coaching post in 2025-26 will be incumbent girls’ and boys’ cross-country running leader Jennifer Dickson. With Samantha Yoko, in the wake of giving birth to her second child in May, stepping down as girls’ track-and-field head coach after two years, Dickson will be her successor after being one of the program’s specialized assistants for several years.
While Yoko – and now Dickson – and Kellen Overstreet officially were the respective genders’ 2025 head coaches for track and field, the commingled teams traditionally have been guided by a collegial staff in which the nominal head coaches and assistants have largely been in charge of specific portions of the teams – throwing events, jumping events, sprint running, and distance running. That will continue with the head coaches handling the administrative duties.
Still sought by the district, with no immediate need for a hiring, is a new boys’ tennis head coach for next spring. Weston Baker has led the tennis Hornets for the past two years.
Otherwise there will be holdovers in all of the fall sports aside from boys’ soccer, for all four winter teams, and for half of the spring endeavors.
At least one other assistant coaching change will occur. Korby Ford has elected to not continue on as a varsity football assistant, but still will be part of the girls’ basketball coaching group. CHS alumnus Dawson Wheeler, a star running back and linebacker in the latter 2010s, will fill that gridiron vacancy under head coach Chad Smith.
Both Cunningham and Rucker will continue their boys’ basketball assistant roles under head coach Tim Cool.
