Former KSU coach Ingle finds happiness in Dalton

In his last shining moment as the loquacious, folksy basketball coach at Kennesaw State — the night of Nov. 15, 2010 — Tony Ingle lured Georgia Tech to his place and laid a most humbling upset upon the Yellow Jackets.

Four months later, both coaches in that game were out of a job. Ingle’s dismissal contained the added sting of academic shortcomings that cost the Owls precious scholarships and practice time.

One coach can joke about it all now. Humor always has come easily to Ingle. Add the fact that a victory parade on the streets of his hometown awaited him Friday, and the man had plentiful reasons to smile.

“People said, ‘Tony you got two people fired that night,’” Ingle remembered. “Everyone expected us to beat everybody the rest of the year and we didn’t. And (Paul) Hewitt couldn’t win either.

“But they gave him $7 million to get out. They gave me seven minutes to get the heck out.”

But look at Ingle now. One could frame what he just did at Dalton State College — winning an NAIA national title in the program’s first season of eligibility — as a good, old-fashioned tale of redemption. One complication, though. The character at the center of it all feels no particular need to be redeemed.

To underscore his belief in himself, Ingle will quote John Wooden, who once declared, “Character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

Ingle has been too caught up in the instant championship the Roadrunners just claimed — winning five games in seven days in Kansas City — to do much looking backward. Back in Dalton, where Ingle was raised and where he played when the school was a two-year institution, they are merely celebrating his arrival three years ago as their own good fortune.

“The people an hour up the road (from Kennesaw) said, ‘Shoot, if you don’t want him, we’ll take him,’” Ingle said.

The town and program are full partners in this thing, Dalton holding an almost familial interest in the school and its 5,000 students. “It is such a marriage; to me it is one of a kind,” Athletic Director Derek Waugh said.

The team plays its home games at the Dalton Convention Center. As the buses rolled onto campus last week after the long ride home from Missouri, hundreds of students and townfolk were there to greet them. Hundreds more turned out for the parade Friday.

“Thanks for the entertaining season and tremendous pride you guys have brought to Dalton,” Mayor Dennis Mock told the team at parade’s end, as reported in the Dalton Daily Citizen.

In 1978, Dalton State decided to disband its athletic department. Twenty years later, it made the jump to a four-year school, but still required years of convincing before re-booting athletics. In came Waugh — an Atlantan by birth, an administrator at Stetson by trade — as AD in 2012.

Having coached basketball at Stetson for 10 years before moving to a desk, Waugh had first-hand knowledge of Ingle’s work. He also was familiar with the lax oversight under Ingle’s watch at Kennesaw State that led to the program falling beneath NCAA standards for academic progress of its players. As a result, KSU basketball faced sanctions for three consecutive years.

Waugh clearly favored Ingle from the beginning — for his charismatic salesmanship, his deep local ties and a record that included a Division II national title at KSU in 2004. Concerns about Ingle’s fall at Kennesaw State melted away as the two discussed the Dalton State start-up.

“I thought he was the perfect guy for the job at the perfect time,” Waugh said.

“I had full faith and confidence that (academic oversight) would not be an issue,” the AD added. “We both said the key to this program was the need to bring in kids who will do a great job representing this community. We weren’t just on the same page, we were on the same sentence.”

In Ingle’s mind, there was no doubt that even as he neared the threshold of 60 and had endured such an inglorious end at Kennesaw State that he’d work a bench again one day.

“I was excited. I wanted to coach again. A fish needs water, you know, and I need to coach basketball,” Ingle, now 62, said.

His first year back in Dalton was one of selling a vision. There wasn’t much else tangible to market. “We had to scratch our way up just to start from scratch,” Waugh said. No locker rooms. No practice facility. No home floor.

The first player Ingle signed was a talented big man, Ladaris Green, who played for him at Kennesaw State and had withdrawn from school after his coach was sacked. He further relied heavily on junior-college transfers. Tournament MVP Jordan Bowling, for instance, came from Faulkner State (Ala.) Community College. Point guard Sean Tate of Canton transferred from Chattahoochee Tech. And, somehow, a very good team was born.

They were ineligible for the postseason in 2013-14, but after paying those dues, the Roadrunners entered this year’s tournament a No. 6 seed. They finished the season 32-4, with the title victory over Westmont (Calif.) College.

The Dalton State platform may be smaller even than Kennesaw State, but Ingle is no less the dynamic figure for it.

So, now he is the acronym king of Whitfield County. In a single interview he broke out no fewer than four of them to help explain his attitude. A brief sampler: FAITH — Finding Answers In The Heart. And HELPFUL — Happy. Enthusiastic. Loving. Positive. Forgiving. Understanding. Learning.

And he immediately is one of the more upbeat voices coming out of the old Carpet Capital since the days when blue shag was in fashion.

“Kennesaw was great and beautiful and we move on. I had three sons that graduated from there. C’mon, we’re all going to have stuff happen to us,” he said.

“I have peace. I have joy. Do I like the way they did it? No. But you don’t react to it, you respond to it. Responding is positive.”