Retiring a Patriot

Jerry Bomholt knew he wanted to finish his career with Jay County.

While his time as a coach didn’t end the exact way he had imagined it, he’s decided it’s time to move on and focus on his health.

After suffering his second health scare in 21 days, Bomholt announced his retirement effective immediately from his role as the Jay County High School boys basketball coach on Tuesday afternoon.

Bomholt most recently collapsed prior to Saturday’s matchup at Blackford, holding him out of his second game this season. He previously had to sit out of the game against Adams Central on Jan. 11 after dealing with low blood pressure. Assistant coach Doug Arbuckle filled in for him in both cases.

Since being released from the hospital early Sunday morning, Bomholt has seen medical personnel to try and determine the cause of the second health scare. 

He has since reflected and during a meeting with his wife and Jay County athletics director Alex Griffin, Bomholt decided it was best to retire from coaching basketball to focus on his health.

“It was extremely difficult,” Bomholt said. “This was probably the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make, because it had to do with what most people would have looked at as a hobby, but this was never a hobby. I took it as a job. …

“But it was tough telling those kids what was going to happen and the coaching staff. But they’ll survive. They’re tough kids. God has a different way He wants this to end for us. We’re going to try to follow His will and not ours and go from there.”

Brogan Gary, previously the junior varsity coach, will step in as the interim coach to finish the season. In turn, Arbuckle will fill in as the JV coach.

Basketball runs deep in Gary’s family full of high-level basketball players, including his father who was an Indiana All-Star at Anderson Highland and played for UNC-Wilmington, an uncle who played for Vanderbilt and an uncle who played for Tulane and coached at Purdue.

Gary began high school at Anderson Highland in the final year before it closed its doors. Then transferring to Pendleton Heights, he was a part of an Arabians squad that made three consecutive regional appearances and finished as the No. 1 team in Class 4A in 2011-12.

The role as the JV coach was his first experience on the sidelines. As he takes over the Patriots, he will look to keep the same goal of making a run for the sectional title.

“My focus here is to be here for these young men,” Gary said. “I want to be a role model and bring in a mentality that doesn’t fold in times of adversity. … We’re going to work our butts off. Our goal right now is to prepare for the sectional and win the sectional. The things they’ve been through this year, the ups and downs, is only going to make us stronger. …

“I know this is tearing a lot of people up. I know we didn’t want him to go out this way and he didn't want to go out this way. It’s a tough time with his health and he’s in our thoughts and prayers. … This season as we go forward, we’re going to be doing this for him because he’s our leader and he’ll continue to be our leader. There’s no forgetting about him.”

Gary will make his debut Thursday at Southern Wells.

Bomholt finished his career with a 602-393, which sits 19th all time in Indiana, record over 44 seasons. He had two stints at JCHS, spanning a total of nine years. He went 112-86 (56.6%) while guiding the Patriots. He has led teams to 13 sectional titles — including two at Jay County — and a state finals run while at Southwestern in 1998.

Bomholt landed his first non-interim head coaching position with Jay County in 1980. After leaving in 1984, he had considered coming back to Portland to retire as a Patriot and got the opportunity in the 2020-21 season.

“Coming here to Jay County for, not really my first job, but it was the first actual thing I got to put together,” Bomholt said. “And the people here have been fantastic. If you could just use easy words to describe it, they’re our family.

“They’ve been our family. And even though we went away for a few years, my wife and I said if we ever have a chance to come back, we’ll come back. We’d like to finish where we’ve started. The hard part is I really wanted to finish this year. But because of other circumstances, it didn’t allow us to finish that way and that just made it awful hard.”