Chris Fryer, who coached Mt. Juliet’s girls to the 2005 Class AAA state basketball championship and was nearing 600 career wins when he retired in 2020, was inducted into the Basketball Coaches Association of Tennessee Hall of Fame last Saturday at Ravenwood High School in Brentwood.
The 1986 graduate of MJHS, where he played football, led the Lady Bears to a 571-143 record in 22 seasons (1998-2020). His teams won 14 regular-season and 12 tournament championships in District 9-AAA and seven Region 5-AAA titles. They reached 12 sectionals and 10 state tournaments.
“We had some really good players,” Fryer said Tuesday. “You do reflect about all the different players that you coached. They were tough kids. They were winners and they wanted to play.
“It definitely wasn’t for everybody. Like anything in life, it’s not for everybody, but those kids that I was fortunate enough to coach, they were all kind of like-minded. They were tough kids and they wanted to win. It made it enjoyable. It gives me a lot of good memories.”
He began his coaching career as a student-teacher on Mark Medley’s football staff at Lebanon before returning to his alma mater where he served as a defensive coordinator and broke into basketball, leading the freshman Lady Bears to a 57-9 record over four seasons. When Tommy Martin retired from coaching the high school team in 1998 after a two-decade/state championship run of his own, Fryer was promoted to varsity head coach.
A winning tradition established by Larry Joe Inman in the 1970s and continued by Martin through the ‘80s and ‘90s, Fryer kept the Lady Bears in the fast lane with players such as 2005 Miss Basketball Alysha Clark (now a 15-year pro) and Miss Basketball finalists Jennifer Johnson, Courtney McFarlin and Caya Williams. He was also named district coach of the year 11 times after winning the freshman honor three times. He was one of the head coaches for the 2006 TACA East-West All-Star game where one of his main rivals, Wilson Central’s Bud Brandon, was his assistant.
After stepping down from the bench in ’20, he transferred to Watertown High where he finished his teaching career.
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