Boys basketball coach Kyle Deterding will resign as head coach this year and Susan DeVoe will end her time as boys golf coach at the end of this season. 

Deterding, who coached the Cardinals for 17 years, said he felt the time was right to focus on his family. He’s been told about how fast time flies as children grow up, and he’s determined to savor every moment with them.

“The time and responsibility of a head coaching duty, even at the high school level for basketball, there’s a lot that goes into it,” Deterding said. “A lot of time, even outside of the season, and I didn’t want to look back in about six years and wish I would have been able to do more things with my own family.”

He plans to remain active in the community and as a math teacher at the high school. He said he still loves basketball coaching and left the door open for other ways to stay connected to the program in the future.

Deterding’s long tenure as head coach featured a state championship and multiple trips to the state tournament, most recently in 2023. 

“The impact that he has had on our kids in our program is, you know, it’s hard to kind of put it into words,” Athletic Director Cara Kimberlin said. “He is a great coach. He is a great builder of relationships with his kids. He is a guy that understands that coaching is not always about X’s and O’s and wins. It’s about building young people. And he does a great job of that.” 

More important to Deterding than any on-court success was the relationships he built with athletes. He has been invited to multiple former players’ weddings and said it meant a lot to build that deep of a connection with students.

“Those kinds of things, that aren’t really basketball related, but more relationship driven,” he said. “Which, especially in high school sports, that’s so important for not only the kids but for the coaches, too. It’s why a lot of coaches coach.”

Replacing Deterding is current assistant coach Tyler Cleveland. 

Deterding said he’s excited for Cleveland and knows he will do a good job taking on head coaching responsibilities. He said Cleveland is similar to himself in how they both view winning and losing as secondary to building strong teams and uplifting students. 

“He’s very energetic, very enthusiastic,” Deterding said. “He’s excited about things. He gets along well with the kids. He knows basketball. I’m really excited. There’s some young talent coming up, so it could be a fun run and he’ll do a great job with them.”

She had always planned to step away after getting the team up and running in order to focus on her own golf career, which kicks up intensity during the spring. DeVoe will remain the head coach for the girls team in the fall. 

Now that the team is in its fifth year, it receives full funding from the district. That made DeVoe confident she could leave the program in new hands. Kimberlin said DeVoe has done a great job building new golf programs.

“I would challenge you to find another school in the state of Kansas that had 32 kids come out for boys golf,” Kimberlin said.

DeVoe intends to remain involved with the program as it moves forward.

“While I love it, I’d rather be a volunteer coach and be able to come when I want to and not have the full responsibility,” she said. “Then I can practice my own game.”

DeVoe plays in tournaments across Kansas and the region. She is looking forward to playing in qualifiers for the United States Golf Association, where she will go up against top talent from across the country. 

“In order to do that, my game has to be pretty sharp, because that’s the whole country,” she said.

Current assistant coach Scott Keltner will replace DeVoe. Kimberlin said she was excited to see him take over the program and help it continue to grow.

“He’ll do a great job,” Kimberlin said. “Scott is a very detail-oriented person. He has a great rapport with the kids. He’s very organized. So there shouldn’t, you know, I don’t foresee there’d be much of a bump in the road with that program, either.”

Kimberlin said DeVoe will remain the “golf guru” around the school. She expects her to remain an important voice in helping both teams.

DeVoe encouraged future coaches to show up and give their best to the students. Because players come at all skill levels, it can be hard to know how to coach all of them. But if you show up and give them your best, she said, they will improve and grow as a team. 

For now, DeVoe is looking forward to watching the boys golf team continue to grow this season. She said they have done a good job improving over the past month. 

“Most of these kids, they’re out here because they want to be,” she said. “They like being outdoors. They’re enthusiastic as long as somebody shows up with a good attitude and wants to really teach them any aspects of the game they can.”

Reach reporter Cuyler Dunn at [email protected] 

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