Normally at this time of the year with the KHSAA State basketball tourney ending, the sounds of baseball bats fill the air, but not this year.
I was thinking the other day about Woodie Crum, who was not only a great basketball coach, but also a great leader on the diamond as he lead his 1958 Maysville High team to the state baseball title.
In my humble opinion, the list of Kentucky High School coaches who excelled in coaching two sports is short, but Woodie Crum belongs on that list. Check out his coaching stats and they are Hall of Fame stats. Over the course of his 37-year high school coaching career, Crum had achieved a lot, including being one of the few coaches in Kentucky basketball history to win over 500 games, 527 to be exact. He was also an excellent baseball coach, with 250 wins in 10 years.
Crum began his coaching career at Mays Lick High School as the head man of the Cardinals, before moving to Maysville High School in 1951 as an assistant basketball coach. When the legendary Coach Earle D. Jones retired, Coach Crum then took over the Dogs. During his nine-year tenure at Maysville, Crum guided his team to three Sweet 16 appearances, and, as head baseball coach to the 1958 State title win the Bulldogs.
Coach Crum left Maysville High and he took the job at Daviess County. In 1962, while at Daviess County High School in Owensboro, Crum was selected to coach the Kentucky All-Stars. He then moved to that “other” basketball state, spending six years as head basketball coach at Lawrence Central in Indianapolis, making one trip to the Indiana state tournament. Returning to Kentucky in 1970, Crum served as head basketball coach for eight years at Harrison County High School in Cynthiana, capturing the regional title in 1976 and making his fourth Sweet 16 appearance. From 1979-83, he was head basketball coach at Pendleton County in Falmouth, before returning to Harrison County, where he coached until his retirement in 1988. We can say that Coach Crum was a coach for all seasons, and he has the stats to back that up.
