Southern Boone Lady Eagles coach Tony Phillips addresses the media during the 2016 Final Four in Columbia.

May 3, 2018

ASHLAND, Mo. --- Tony Phillips helped take Southern Boone girls basketball to new heights.

Fly like a (Lady) Eagle, indeed.

^ In three seasons, a record of 61-26.

^ Back-to-back district championships --- for a program that had gone 0-22 in 2013-14.

^ The first trip to the Final Four in school history. Ever. If you weren't sure, ever is a long time.

To be sure, the Lady Eagles' Class of 2017 was richly talented and had a lot to do with that success. Just as surely, however, so did the head coach.

"They were a group of friends, but they weren't great teammates, at first," Phillips said. "One of the big things you could see over that two-year run is that they got closer and started playing better together.

"They'd always been talented. When I had the opportunity to take over, I didn't reinvent the wheel or anything, we just played to our strengths.

"I think I brought stability, accountability and discipline, and the belief that if you outworked your opponent day-in and day-out, that championships were possible."

The floor leader of the team was Faryn Griffin, a 2017 graduate of Southern Boone.

"When I was younger, I had an attitude problem playing sports," Griffin said. "But coach (Phillips) told me I wasn't going to flop, I wasn't going to have an attitude ... he changed me and made me a better player."

Last month, Southern Boone and Superintendent Chris Felmlee chose not to renew Phillips' contract. To put it another way, he was fired.

Why?

It seems to be for the same reasons Ehren Earlywine was fired as Mizzou's softball coach earlier this year --- Phillips worked his players too hard, he yelled at them too often.

Phillips saw potential trouble on the horizon when he was called in for a meeting after the 2017 season.

"Basically, they told me I was working the girls too hard," Phillips said. "Obviously, it wasn't those seniors who were graduating, it was the kids and the parents of the kids who were going to be on varsity this year.

"But that's when it all started, their plans to get rid of me."

Griffin had heard the same things. In small towns, it's what happens.

"I wasn't really surprised he was fired, but it ticked me off," Griffin said. "It doesn't seem right, everything he's done and started."

Phillips --- who's grown the girls program to 65 players, grades 7-12, the most in school history --- was told on April 11.

"They called me in at 2:30 and by 2:35," Phillips said, "it was done and over."

Like Earleywine, Phillips was given no reason for his dismissal. He was simply handed a three-sentence statement.

This letter is to notify you that the administration will not recommend you to the members of the Boarding of Education for coaching girls' basketball for the 2018-19 school year. We wish to take the program in a different direction. Thank you for your service and dedication.

"When my AD (Pat Lacy) wouldn't tell me what the meeting was about --- he had sent me an email at 10:30 that morning --- my head was telling me they were going to let me go," Phillips said.

"When I read those sentences, I was crying and I looked at Pat and said: 'Pat, why are you doing this to me? You'd told me I did a good job.'

"He started to speak and said: 'I thought you did do a good job until we got this new information ... '

"But he didn't get the word information out of his mouth completely, the superintendent cut him off and said: 'We're just going in a different direction.'"

Phillips has no idea what that new information might be. (If you know and choose to share, please contact me at oicrocker@hotmail.com.)

And what does a "different direction" mean, anyway? Giggling and having fun at practice instead of working? Losing instead of winning?

When asked why Phillips wasn't retained, Felmlee stuck to his guns.

"We decided to go a different direction with the girls program, that's where we're at," he said Thursday afternoon.

When asked what a different direction actually meant ...

"We just decided as an administrative team," Felmlee said, "that we wanted to see the team go in a different direction."

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PHILLIPS' COACHING STYLE is a direct reflection of his high school coach, Rod Haley, a Hall of Famer who turned New Bloomfield baseball and basketball into a dynasty in the 1980s and 90s.

"It was discipline, discipline, discipline," Phillips, 42, said. "It was fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. There were no days off from those things. He was hard on us, but he did it with tough love and we knew he cared about us.

"Back in the day at New Bloomfield, all of us would have run through a brick wall for coach Haley."

Phillips spent the last 12 years at Southern Boone High School, and he's been in the school district for a total of 15 years. He helped start the alternative school, he was the transportation director, and he taught PE, health and leadership classes.

He's also been head coach of baseball, served as an assistant in football, and coached middle school and JV boys basketball,

"I've done a little bit of everything," he said.

He took over the Lady Eagles in 2015 and directed them to a whopping 53 wins in two seasons. But was he working the team too hard?

"He didn't work us too hard," Griffin said. "I think some people think that, but I never did. What do you expect? The harder you work, the more you're going to get out of it.

"It you don't want to do it, then don't do it."

Griffin continued.

"It's really hard for me to see where people are coming from. I know if I wasn't working hard, my dad would be on my butt. He wouldn't be on the coach, he'd be on me."

At the very least, Phillips was engaged with his team.

"I've had a coach before who was very quiet, didn't really say anything ... that was my least favorite coach," Griffin said. "I'd rather be told what I was doing wrong instead of letting everything slide."

This year's girls team did struggle, going 8-17 with an entirely new cast of untested varsity players. Part of reason, Phillips said, was that he'd taken the meeting after the 2017 season to heart.

"Honestly, this year was a little bit my fault, because I didn't have the conviction to work the way we needed to work to be successful," he said.

After this season, Phillips was contacted by some parents who told him that "one of the dads was trying to create problems," and there were letters being written to the superintendent. Phillips asked to schedule a meeting with Lacy and others to "air out the concerns," but there was no get-together until the April 11 meeting.

Since being fired, Phillips said he's been overwhelmed by the support.

"I've got a stack of stuff from people supporting me," he said. "The comments I've received on Facebook, they mean a lot to me; my former players reaching out, they've been amazing. They're upset. They know how hard I work, that I'm not verbally abusive and I love my players. I just expect their very best every day."

Phillips said it's where we are as a society.

"The kids haven't changed, kids want discipline," he said. "The parents have changed. If we don't take back control, we're going to lose high school sports, it will be all club sports.

"I don't ever remember coach (Haley) having to deal with parents like this. They dropped their kids off at the ball park and they allowed him to coach us. My dad would have never said a word to coach Haley."

Said Griffin: "Just one parent can make things go completely south," she said, "especially in a small town."

When asked how much weight he gives to complaining parents, Felmlee said:

"It's not something we disregard, completely, I think everything is taken into consideration. We just felt we needed to go in a different direction."

Lastly, Phillips' days on the sidelines are not finished, you can count on that. They only seem to be finished at Southern Boone.

"I have a passion for teaching and a passion for coaching, I don't want to be away from the game," he said. "I want to go to a place where the expectation is excellence."

Despite of success, Phillips fired
as head coach at Southern Boone

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