This week on the Thoughts from the Crawlspace podcast, Jamie Miller, CEO of Gold Key Home Inspections, Inc., speaks with Chandler Prible, head coach of Westview High School’s basketball team. Chandler shares his journey into coaching, influenced by his father’s disciplined yet caring approach. Jamie and Chandler discuss the value of fostering a positive team culture that values fun and personal development, rather than solely focusing on outcomes. Chandler also shares his strategic approach to coaching, which hinges on creating an efficient, fast-paced style of play that prioritizes teamwork and communication. 

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Episode Highlights

• The importance of creating meaningful relationships between coaches and players.
• Why coaching should focus on developing character and discipline.
• Critical themes related to youth sports today.
• The challenges of keeping kids engaged in sports amidst modern distractions.
• Building community and character through high school basketball.

Timestamps

(00:00) Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawlspace

(01:02) Chandler's Journey into Coaching

(02:21) Coaching Philosophy and Impact

(03:51) Understanding Coaching Styles

(05:34) Pressure and Performance in Basketball

(10:54) Upcoming Season and New Challenges

(13:16) Encouraging Participation in Youth Sports

(21:04) Westview Basketball’s Upcoming Season

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Hello again, everybody.

Thanks for watching another episode of thoughts from the Crawlspace today.

Today we're taking a little bit of a twist.

Homeowners, we're not talking about you specifically today.

We are talking sports.

One thing we love around here is sports, specifically basketball, high school basketball.

Today we have Chandler pribble with us.

He is the head coach at Westview High School.

He's been here for two, now, two years now since moving up from the, from southern Indiana.

They know how to play a little bit down there, but north is where it's really at in Indiana.

Right.

So Chandler is here today.

We're going to be talking about just a variety of topics.

So, Chandler, thanks for dropping in.

Yeah, thank you.

Giving us some of your insight into the team.

Why don't you tell everybody what got you into coaching?

Coaching is a job that you can have a great impact on at the high school level.

You're making about $0.10 an hour if you calculate it out throughout the year.

But there's a draw to it.

And what kind of got you interested in that?

Where'd you start playing and so forth?

Yeah, so my, my dad has been coaching since I was, you know, as little as I can remember.

He coached football at Southern Wells.

He also coaches, coached, and still does coach basketball at Bluffton, where I, where I went to school and I graduated from.

And, you know, one of my assistants, Colin Barker, his dad was also, his dad was the head coach at Bluffton all while I was growing up.

So we were always at the gym together, hanging out like, that's where my friends were at.

That's where, that's where I got to see all my role models, whether it was the players or the coaching staff.

And I got to always see that those were the guys that had great relationships with players.

It was a program that really cared about, really cared, obviously, about winning, because everybody wants to win, but really cared about what type of person you were building as a coach.

And that's the influence that I wanted to have.

I wanted a career that I felt like had a big purpose to it.

And so that's kind of what got me into coaching.

Yeah, that's cool.

I know coaching is, or now it's a year round job, but at the very least, your coaching staff is together five, six months a year, so you really develop those relationships.

Yes.

And it's a bonding, and you had a great experience with it, so that led you into, you want to do it on your own.

Yeah.

And I was able to see, you know, my dad is, is very strict and very disciplined.

Um, you know, we, we, if he asked us to do something, we better go do it the first time, if it was around the house, if it was at practice, wherever it was at.

But what I thought was interesting is, you know, whether, you know, if it was him disciplining me at home, you know, minutes later, I still would be like, hey, dad, you want to go play catch?

You want to go do this?

Like, you could have both.

You could be somebody who is strict and you would demand a lot, but also, you could, like, you could, you could care enough about the people that you are doing that to that they feel that and still want to be around you.

And I was able to see that from my dad at home and also able to see that from, from the coaching staff whenever I was a player and just a kid just watching practices.

So that's kind of what, what I hope to be is, you know, somebody that, that, you know, when I, Wiley Minix gets married in five years, that, you know, he hopes that he calls me and wants me to go be at something like that.

And I'm excited to keep fostering those relationships and be able to still be invested in his life and maybe help him through some times later on as well.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I think from just watching your style on the sideline, it's, I know inside you're probably tied up in knots, but you keep it cool.

You're not screaming and yelling at players.

You're not embarrassing them in front of the crowd, you're not demeaning them.

You know, I can't think of a player in history that's out there intentionally trying to make mistakes.

You know, you weed those guys out in tryouts, but you just do a great job of getting your point across without being demonstrative.

And I think that leads to good relationships.

Yeah, I didn't really have this whenever I was a player.

Like, I didn't have issues with a coach being that way, like, with a negative reaction every time I messed up.

But I hear that from a lot of players or people that have played where, you know, they say, every time I did this, you know, I lost confidence and whatever because, you know, coach would, you know, grab at his head or would be screaming or whatever.

And.

And also, I'm not really a yeller anyways.

I'm more of a.

You know.

Yeah, we'll have punishments for stuff to keep them accountable, but I'm not a scream in your face type of person.

I just.

I don't really.

That's not my style.

Yeah, well, I think most players appreciate that.

I also think that it's hard for me to think.

If I'm so worried about being emotional and overreacting to every single thing, whether it's yelling at an official or yelling at one of my players, how am I supposed to think three, four, five moves ahead?

And really, it's a.

It's a chess match between me and.

And who we're playing against, what that coach is going to do next, you know?

So I.

I need to make sure that I am thinking that far ahead.

So I don't.

I try to not get wrapped up into, you know, whatever little thing happens.

I got to move on pretty quickly.

Yeah.

And I think the players feed off of that, and I think what we've seen, we've won two tight sectionals in a row, and that sectional championship game on your home floor can sometimes be pretty pressure filled, especially if you're a favorite and it gets close or whatever.

But we've.

We've played some of our best basketball of the year in the pressure situations.

Yeah.

I think it helps, too, that we have a.

We have a great fan base, and a lot of games are for.

I think for our opponents.

They love to come in and try to beat us, so that.

That puts a little added pressure on us each time we go out to perform.

And it's not just that sectional championship.

I mean, you.

You look, a week before, we won the sectional this last year, and we played Concorde at home, who's ranked in four, a pretty high.

You know, that.

That was a pretty loud and rowdy environment, and we ended up winning it on.

On kind of a last second shot.

But those types of games, which we are fortunate enough to have because we have such a tough schedule, we see that quite a bit.

I think that gives us that edge when it comes to the tournament.

Yeah, definitely.

Speaking of schedule, what are some.

There's some new teams on it this year.

You know, I think west, two long time fans, can almost memorize the schedule from year to year and so forth.

So what are some new teams we.

We've got this year?

Well, our schedule has gotten harder, I think.

So we.

We dropped Elkhart Christian, and we picked up Blackhawk Christian.

So that's you know, they have a big kid on their team who is, you know, maybe an Indiana all star.

So he's.

He's really good.

Six, nine or 610, athletic.

Can shoot.

It can kind of do everything.

And I know they just got a couple of transfers from.

From a couple other Fort Wayne schools, too.

So they'll.

They'll be very solid.

And then they're up to three eight now, aren't they?

Yeah.

Yeah, they're three eight.

They've won several state championships and regionals and so forth.

Yeah.

So then Plymouth dropped us, and we picked up Leo, who I don't really know anything about, but pretty consistently.

They've been a very solid program that has.

Has a lot of talent.

Yeah.

They were in the state final just a few years ago.

Yeah.

They got beat by Silver Creek.

And.

Three years ago, maybe four years ago.

Yeah.

Silver Creek was loaded that year.

Yeah.

So.

Well, that's kind of exciting.

You know, I think those are always the teams that you test yourself against, see how good you can really be.

You know, some of the.

Sometimes some of the conference teams or the smaller school maybe don't give you the challenge that you need to get better.

It feels good to beat somebody by 30, but maybe you're not getting any better because of it.

Yeah.

Each game, I think, gives you a different challenge because, you know, there's weeks where we play maybe a Friday and a Saturday, and when you play back to back, that gives you a different challenge.

And in the sectional, you have to win on a Friday and a Saturday if you want to win the sectional.

You know, when you play against somebody who's maybe not as good, like, you still have to.

You know, me as a coach, it's a challenge.

I've got to get 17 and 18 year olds to show up and not just think, oh, we're going to win.

Just cause we're supposed to win, you know, so.

So that's a challenge for me and for our team to show up.

And every single day, they have to be able to compete as hard as they possibly can.

And finding that consistency in anything is really hard.

But I think every type of game and team that we play is.

Is a different challenge, which is good for us.

Talk a little more generally.

What's your coaching style?

What.

And obviously, it depends on what players you have.

You know, anybody would love to have a six nine all star on their team, but those don't come around Westview too often.

What.

What's your preferred style of play?

What do you emphasize with the guys?

What you try to do on both ends of the court.

I mean, I want.

I want to.

On offense, I want to be highly efficient, and on defense, I want to make sure that we, you know, we need to make everything difficult for the other team.

So defensively, I want to make sure that they only get one shot.

If they get a shot, we need to block out really well.

I also want it to be a fast paced gig.

I think.

I think teams, whether they score or miss either one, but when teams score, you know, they're going to high five, they're going to be pointing at the guy that passed it to them, and they're.

They're distracted for the first couple seconds while they're getting back on defense, I want to be a team that pushes that tempo on a make or miss and really puts a lot of pressure on the defense.

Whenever we're just transitioning, doesn't mean we have to shoot it quick.

So that's.

That's a tough challenge to get guys to understand that they think, oh, we're playing fast.

That means we just shoot a bunch of threes.

So that is not what we want.

And there's times where you'll see in games where it does slow down a little bit, but I want the ball to get into the paint.

So ideally, everybody wants to shoot a layup, but that's not always the case.

So offensively, if it goes in the paint, almost every shooting drill you do from the perimeter, the guy is passing it from under the basket.

So if you can get the ball down to that area now, your percentage goes up tremendously just because you're shooting a shot that's in rhythm, and that's a big thing.

I think rhythm and flow are a big thing in basketball.

You know, there's times where we may have our best player sitting on the bench, and if our team's in a rhythm, I'm not putting them back in.

We're going to keep flowing until I feel like that momentum swings a little bit and then we'll.

Then we'll make a change.

But I kind of like to ride out that momentum.

So the season is starting in a few weeks, or at least practice starting in a few weeks.

What do you think about the group we got coming back?

We're coming off back to back sectionals.

Westview's never won three in a row.

Thanks for that.

So that's an opportunity to do that this year.

No pressure, of course.

But talk about some of the guys, what you've seen during the summer.

The summer, I think, always kind of gives a little bit of an indication of what's.

What's coming.

Yeah.

I do like the no pressure comment there, because every year you can find a reason to find something that adds pressure if you look externally like that.

So with me, I have to just kind of evaluate our team and figure out what we can do to be better and then.

And just keep it.

Keep it at that alone, because, yeah, if you look at like that, or last year, it's like, oh, well, we had a.

You know, we had two kids transfer in, so we got a.

You know, we.

We have to win the sectional.

Like, you can always put something on it where.

Or the year before that, we won the sectional but lost in the region, so this year we have to win the regional.

You know, like, there's always something like that you can say to.

To kind of add pressure to it, and it's.

Well, you lost, what, five seniors.

How many seniors did you have last?

Five seniors.

So really, when you have a team like that, that's lost that much, in a sense, the pressure's off a little bit.

The expectations externally might be down a little bit.

Yeah.

And that's.

That's another.

Another thing as well.

I don't know.

I think that's all interesting, and I try to stay out of all that and just, you know, I think we're going to be a great group.

I think it's a group that has a lot of fun playing together already.

Our summer was exciting.

I know it was just the summer, but it was.

It was fun the way that they played.

They got every loose ball, and it felt like that.

I mean, every time there was a chance, we came up with it.

They blocked out incredibly well.

You know, we played, I scheduled on purpose, like, every big school and talented program around, and we specifically only went and asked those types of teams, and we still went ten and three in our summer.

So we competed against really good teams, physical teams, and played really well.

So I think that the depth we had last year when we were playing nine guys, I think that really is going to help us going into this year.

Awesome.

You mentioned playing nine guys.

We've also talked off camera about the challenges of getting enough players, really, at all levels to play consistently, whether it's fifth grade or 11th grade.

So talk about those challenges a little bit.

What can parents do, what can the community do to kind of encourage kids to play basketball?

I mean, it's a.

There's a lot more things to distract kids these days, I think, than when.

When I played.

Certainly that was all there was for fun was basketball or work, and so they got more.

These days, what can you do to encourage them to get out there and play?

Yeah, I agree.

There's a lot more that you can go do.

But I also.

I think part of the problem too is as parents, we think that there has to be a coach around for our kid to get better, and that's not true at all.

I know whenever I was done with my basketball practices or workouts or whatever, and I was going to play for fun, sometimes we would lower the rim to 7ft and we would play dunk ball and just had fun.

That was some of the best basketball we played and I don't think that's a problem.

You're still learning skills.

It's a game that you're supposed to have fun playing.

And I think that people feel like they have to pay somebody to go do an individual workout for their kid to get better, and that is not true.

Just get a group of friends together and go play.

Go outside and you can shoot by yourself and do like, can be fun to just go, you know, you need to have fun with it because once you get up to the high school level, it becomes a little more serious.

And if you don't have that underlying joy in playing, you're.

You're gonna lose out on that and you're gonna end up getting like, feeling like it's a job and you don't want to feel like it.

I mean, once it feels like a job, I'll stop doing it.

I.

I still just have fun.

Like, I'm a kid out there sometimes.

So, um.

I think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think that, you know, our high school program, we try to do things that are just fun for the kids.

You know, a couple years ago, we went to a purdue practice.

We took the whole team down to Purdue and, you know, coach painter came over because it was a shoot around, so it was a little bit more light on their end and his assistants kind of ran it.

He came over and explained everything that they were doing.

He talked to our players like the whole time.

It was.

I was not expecting that much of a welcoming experience and it was awesome.

We got to sit right there on the sideline and all the fancy media chairs.

It was really cool.

Last year we went and watched Grace play, who was undefeated in ranked number one.

It was their alumni weekend, so it was a packed house.

It was really cool.

So we try to do things like that that are fun and yes, it's basketball related, but it's not them being coached.

We're kind of just hanging out and building a relationship.

And I think that's really important for our guys to come together that way.

I think.

I've always wondered, the trend has been to go toward more individual sports.

I think tennis, golf, and especially in Indiana in the spring, you're going to be doing that in a heavy coat.

I mean, we have the best fan base in the area.

I don't think that's, I mean, in our conference, certainly that's not even in question.

So get out there, bond with teammates.

I mean, I like what you said about enjoying the game, having fun.

Yeah.

You go to practice for five months, he could potentially get a little worn down, a little tired of the game unless you have that built in joy.

And the other side of it too is just expectations.

Like why do you want your, as a parent, why do you want your kid to play sports?

Is it just so they get a college scholarship or just so they can be the leading scorer?

Like, is that really why we want our kids to play sports?

Like, or maybe because they can learn to fill a role, like what they will do when they become an adult at a job and they're just, they're an employee and to do that role incredibly well, like, we need every employee at every job to feel like their job matters.

And that's one guy can be the boss.

Yeah.

So to speak.

So I think that if your kid plays five minutes a game and when they go in there, they screen well, they block out, they do that stuff that, or they dive on the floor.

That's such a big thing in a game.

It doesn't matter if they scored zero points.

Like they went in there, they represented themselves, their school, their family well, because they worked as hard as they could.

That stuff like that gets me excited to talk about now, the kid that makes the shot and has to throw up some, some sign with his hand and beat his chest, like, like, I mean, that, that doesn't really prove anything.

Like, sure, he made a shot, you know, good for him, but what type of person, you know, is that kid?

We don't really know just from scoring.

Right.

That's, that's an, everybody wants to do that and that's, I don't know, it's just a little, a little different.

I think that intangible stuff means a little bit more.

Yeah.

High school sports just have an amazing way of maybe developing, helping a kid develop discipline, toughness I can still think of lessons when I was on the team in high school.

One was just being on time.

The rule we had is if you were late to practice, I'm not even sure if we got one.

If it was the second time you're off the team, well, it meant everything to be there.

There's no way you're gonna be late.

So that's just kind of carried on into adulthood.

So being on time, showing up when you don't feel good, um, doing your best, even when you're not immediate, don't have immediate gratification.

So those are just.

And we're getting a little more too philosophical here, but I think those are all awesome reasons to get your kid involved in, in a sport like basketball and encourage them.

I like what you said about you.

Don't some of the best Westview teams we ever had were teams that played nine or ten guys.

Well, obviously got four or five that aren't starting.

Yeah.

But they're a valuable contributor.

And that's, you know, down the road when you're a dad, you know, those lessons of sacrifice and effort and toughness really go, go a long way.

So gonna jump back just a little bit.

Bluffton, you played there.

So where'd you meet your wife, and how'd that all come about?

So my brother was playing college basketball at Indiana, Westland.

So him and I were always doing like, I was coaching at Bluffton, so I would, I would let him in the gym.

We would lift and go through workouts together and stuff like that during the summer.

And there was a girl that just graduated from Bluffton that was training with us.

So I just went up to watch one of her college games at Indiana Tech, which is where my wife went.

And we met there at the game.

She was at Indiana Tech at the time?

Yeah.

So basketball, a basketball family.

Yeah.

Happened to meet at a basketball game.

Yeah.

Well, that's awesome.

We really have appreciated you guys contributions to Westview, to the community, to the neighborhood.

And we really want, really appreciate how you guys mentor young men and support them.

So thank you.

Anything else you want to add as far as going into this season?

Anything to look for encouragement for fans to come out in droves.

I mean, there's nothing better to do on a Friday night in Indiana in December, unless you got to do last minute Christmas shopping or something, but to just come out and support us.

Yeah, no, it's going to be a group that's going to be fun to watch.

I feel like our community understands those intangible things.

We talked about on the floor.

There's nothing better than in a close game when there's a loose ball and one of our guys beats our opponent diving on the floor, and we come up with a big play all because of our effort, you know.

Or last year when Wade Springer takes the charge like that, just, the crowd just went nuts.

We have a team full of guys that want to do things like that.

So it's going to be a group that's really fun, and I think we'll have a pretty solid season.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Well, thanks for coming in today.

We're looking forward to it.

I always say basketball is what gets you through winter in Indiana.

If you follow the team, by the time you get to sectional, it's almost spring.

So awesome.

Thanks for watching today, guys.

Please share this video, this podcast, and tell everybody you know about it and most importantly, come out and watch the games this season.

Thank you for listening.

This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.

For more information about Gold key inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.