HS BASKETBALL: COACHING CAREER ABOUT MORE THAN WINS AND LOSSES FOR OWEGO’S EVANS (March 10, 2026)

By TIM TAYLOR
Tioga County Sports Report
OWEGO — A coaching career which has spanned five decades came to a closure with the end of the 2025-26 Owego boys basketball season in February.

Chris Evans, whose connection with the sport began as a youth player here in the 1970s has bid farewell to a 39-year coaching career on the hardwoods.

It was a career which not only took him to various locations in the United States and abroad, but has come to a conclusion in the community he grew up in.

Unlike most young athletes, Evans aspired to be a coach at a young age.

“I think I probably knew about it when I was probably 10 or 12 years old, because I was just so in love with the game that I thought the natural course of things would take me into coaching one day,” he said. “I think I told my class a while ago that I didn't realize I wasn't going to play in the NBA until I was maybe seventh grade, and then I didn't realize I wouldn't be Division I until maybe ninth or 10th grade.

“Being a Division III basketball player was still pretty cool, and I was pretty fortunate. Even at Geneseo I think I took some coaching classes, took some first aid and safety classes, and I thought this would be the natural progression. The coaching came first, and the teaching of English came second.”

EARLY INFLUENCES
Evans had several influences as a young player, maybe none more important than Charlie Sibley, whom he formed a friendship with while playing ball at the Tioga County Boys Club and in AAU.

“God bless him,” Evans said. “He coached a lot of those teams.”

Sibley was an assistant to Evans at Owego for 15 years and had also helped with the girls program prior to his death in 2020.

The Charlie Sibley Memorial Tournament was formed in December 2021 in his honor and has included various teams from the STAC and IAC, including Tioga County representatives from Candor, Newark Valley and Tioga.

Owego has reached the championship game in all five years, winning the title in 2022 and 2025.

“Basketball was in the blood and I just loved working with kids, and I remember working Golden Valley early on when I was young,” Evans noted of the Golden Valley Basketball Camp in Sidney.

“Tom Morrissey took me up there, got me hooked up with that. Soddy Mirabito owned that land up there, and Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson and Walter Berry and all those old St. John’s guys, Lou Carnesecca, they were all up there. We went up and worked and as a camper up there, I think I was probably 12 or 13 when I met Terry Heller, who's the coach at Chenango Valley, so he and I have known each other forever.

“It was a neat place, and it was a neat place to become educated and to just kind of watch other coaches and learn what they were doing and try to emulate that.”

THE HOOPS EXPERIENCE
An OFA standout in the early 1980s, Evans played at SUNY Geneseo following high school graduation in 1983.

After college graduation in 1987 he coached freshman ball at Owego, and in 1989 he headed to Ireland where he coached while also playing professionally.

He came back to Owego in 1991 as a JV coach before taking over at Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, Texas.

It was there that Evans met the love of his life, Frances, who would become his bride when his coaching career took him to the College of Charleston in South Carolina.

As an assistant coach with the Cougars for three years, Evans had an opportunity to share in three NCAA Division I tournament appearances with the program. The program also held a No. 16 national ranking at one point.

He would eventually return to Owego and become an English teacher at OFA and in 2005, he became the varsity head coach.

“I never thought I would be back here, to be honest with you,” Evans said. “As a high school person, hopefully, you think beyond this a little bit. I came back after Geneseo and I was in radio, and I was coaching for a little bit here, but when I went to Texas and got a teaching job down there and a coaching job down there, I never thought I would be back here.

Evans’ teams won the first of three Section IV championships in 2006. Owego’s trio of trips to the state playoffs ended in losses to eventual champions Peekskill in 2006 and Westhill in 2023, as well as runner-up Lowville in 2019.

FAMILY CONNECTIONS
As much as basketball was in his blood, moreso was the desire to become a parent.

“I was still working the summer circuit basketball camp after basketball camp after basketball camp,” said Evans. “I had met an assistant coach from the College of Charleston at the Rutgers University basketball camp and he and I stayed in touch. When there was an opening there after three years at the military academy in Texas, I interviewed for that job, and I thought I was going to be in college basketball forever, but I think it was more important to be a father.

“I look back at that and I think there are some places where, had I known this, there are some places where I think you can be both a family man and a college basketball coach, but at that time, on that staff, we were going 16 hours a day, and then some, and I just didn't think that it was doable to do both.

“I wanted to be a father and have a family, so in a roundabout way we ended up back here. I think at one point we were in Colorado, and I talked to Joe Palladino, and he said you know, Jane Arcudi's leaving. You have your English degree. Why don't you try to come back to Owego?”

Evans’ lengthy tenure at Owego would not have been possible had he not received support from his spouse.

“My wife was very adamant that we raise our children either by her family in south Texas or by my family in upstate New York, and we came to upstate New York.

Being from the south, she would need to adapt to life in the northeast.

“It was a huge adjustment,” Evans said.

“The one thing that she wanted to do was she wanted to make sure that we bought a house in the village, and we looked at a few outside of the village, but she wanted to live in the village so that she could take the (baby) carriage out on walks. People still talk about her being out with the baby carriage in 25-degree weather, and she's pushing these little tykes around. And that's what she is, she's an outdoor kind of person. She wanted to be outside, and she wanted the kids to be outside, so she adjusted pretty well.

“She and I are both at that age now where we're kind of sick of the cold, and we can't wait to get back to a little warmer weather, but she certainly was a trooper and has been for a long time now. She knows probably more people around here than I do. Between her job at the salon and her job as a property manager, she knows everybody and everybody knows her. She's done a lot for Owego. People don't see that, but as a property manager, she's done a lot for Owego.”

Frances has been a familiar face at her husband’s games and has been a strong supporter through his countless hours of practice, preparation and play.

“We're a basketball family, but she bought into that too,” Evans said. “She came to those games at the College of Charleston when she had moved to Charleston with me and she's been involved ever since. And she loves it, and she knows it pretty well.

She knows that's what our family's about and our boys were about, and still one is coaching in college. She adjusted very, very well and became a basketball fanatic like the rest of us. She knows that I'm going to be gone and she does her thing. She's very, very busy herself. She is a hard-working, busy person.”

Sons Dylan and Brendan were exposed to hoops from an early age.

“They probably didn't have much of a choice,” Evans said. “I was watching a lot. I've been a Big East freak forever. Even when I was at the College of Charleston they used to call me Big East Boy down there. I grew up watching St. John's and UConn and Seton Hall and Providence and Villanova. I grew up watching those teams, and this is when Syracuse was in the Big East, but they sold their soul to go big-time football and see what's happening in their basketball program. It's not good.

“The boys were right there every step, and they came to all the games. We were very, very fortunate, very blessed to have them around for as long as we did. They came up in the system, and they loved Owego Free Academy basketball and rooted for us every step of the way.

“We played a lot of AAU,” he added. “They remember the trips probably better than I do, all those AAU trips over the years when they were playing in fourth grade and fifth grade and sixth grade, and on and on and on. I coached a lot of those teams and other parents stepped in and coached a lot of those teams.

Dylan followed in his father’s footsteps and this past December was named associate head men's basketball coach at Richard Bland College in Virginia. He was the men's basketball student manager at St. Bonaventure University and was also involved with Owego’s boys basketball program. He went on to be the women's basketball graduate assistant coach at Keuka College and was the Finger Lakes Fury AAU 8th-and 9th-grade boys head coach before joining the Richard Bland College men's basketball coaching staff in 2024.

“He's a bit of a basketball savant when it comes to X's and O's and to understanding what's going to happen 10 or 15 seconds before it happens,” Evans said of Dylan. “He's watched so much basketball, I think at this point probably as much or more than I have, only in the sense because he watches film and he breaks down film. It's incredible. He has notebooks just filled with out-of-bounds plays and sideline out-of-bounds plays and last-second plays and zone plays and man-to-man plays, and he has an encyclopedic kind of knowledge of basketball. He's in the grind, and he's got to recruit, and he's got to establish relationships with players, and do all that other stuff besides the X's and O's.”

Not yet 25, Brendan is already a successful financial advisor in the Rochester area. Like Dylan, he played for his father in high school, then headed off to St. John Fisher where he served as founder, president and player for the newly formed men’s club basketball team during his senior year. He also runs the internship program for Northwestern Mutual in Pittsford.

Chris Evans’ parents have been frequently spotted sitting behind the bench at Owego and AAU games over the years.

“It's been a great thing for our family to have that kind of passion and a connection to something a little bit bigger than ourselves,” Evans said.

EVERLASTING MEMORIES
Evans will have numerous memories to look back on with his family, friends and the former players he’s come in contact with over the years.

“I love the memories and I love sitting down and talking about those memories,” he said. “It's a camaraderie and it's a connectedness to other kids. They'll sit around to this day and talk to Joey Higgins and Nate Bennett, and all those kids who went on those trips with us. Scott Woodring. Sam Taylor was part of that group who traveled with us. I just got a note from a former Newark Valley kid named Ethan Bigelow who was on a couple of those teams with us. It was kids from other towns. It wasn't just Owego kids. It meant a lot to them, and it's something that they talk about as one of the joyful moments of their childhood.”

His lengthy tenure has allowed Evans to coach father-son duos. In fact, two of this season’s senior players’ fathers are former Evans charges. Carter Rieg’s dad, Jason, played for Evans in 1987 while Duke Snyder’s father, Scott, was on Evans’ JV squad.

Dean Casterline played on Evans’ first team and although his children don’t play basketball they are in his classroom.

COMBINING CAREERS
Mixing coaching with teaching at the high school level has been very rewarding and insightful for Evans.

“I get to see the kids off the court,” he said. “I get to see the kids every day. I get to have most all of them in class at one time or another in a small school, and so I get to see them out of that realm that can be an intense, challenging venue.

“Here in the classroom it's a little bit more laid back and not quite as hard-hitting and we're not pressed for time. We're not necessarily trying to take care of the ball every two seconds or rebound or get physical and box out kind of thing. It's learning in a different way, so I love having them in class. I get to see them in a different way. They get to see me in a different way and I think it's been very, very beneficial for that.

“The rewarding part, I think, is that I get to see them as more than just one-dimensional people and they get to see me probably that way as well, and just to spend time with the future and to hopefully impact them in some way positively.

“I love the messages when they're 23, and the messages when they get married and the messages after they have their first child, I love, I live for those messages. Those are what make it worthwhile, and to know that you may have played just a small, small little role in somebody's life like that, I think it's pretty special for any teacher or any coach.

“Because of journals and because of everything else that the kids write to me, I know a lot of the ins and outs of Owego and the people.”

A GRATEFUL MAN
Evans will be forever grateful for what coaching and teaching has blessed him and his family with.

“I'm just extraordinarily blessed and I think my whole family is and, and my wife and I are going to spend a lot of time traveling, and hopefully a lot more sunshine, a little warmer. We're going to follow our kids around a little bit, and I'll play some more golf, and we'll be with lots of friends and family and kind of continue that blessing.

“Just the gratitude for all the people along the way, the families of the basketball players, the parents, people who have done so much over the years and all the stuff behind the scenes that nobody gets recognized for or acknowledged for.

“I'm grateful that there was so much support over the years because there didn't have to be. People could have gotten very upset with my shenanigans at times and my intensity, but I think there was enough belief in my ability that they were very, very supportive and I really appreciate that.

“The Irish have this saying. When something is immeasurable, something is so massive that it can't be measured, they like to use the phrase, ‘Beyond the beyonds.’ My gratitude for this position, this job, my family, my life, the kids, the basketball, the relationships extends beyond the beyonds. It really does. I feel like I'm the luckiest person and the most blessed, because I am in class every day, and I hear the stories.

“It's not really about the wins or the losses. It's more about the relationships.”

NOTE: Evans is also the boys golf coach and will return for the 2026 season if a replacement is not found.

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