Next is 600

Coming into his 44th season at the helm of a high school basketball team, Jerry Bomholt only needed six victories to reach 600 career wins.

The Patriots only reached eight wins in the 2023-24 campaign, getting their sixth in the final game of January. This year, the Patriots can reach that sixth win and Bomholt’s milestone just 10 games into the season.

The Jay County High School boys basketball team will travel to Berne Tuesday to take on the South Adams Starfires in the Allen County Athletic Conference tournament opener for a chance to give Bomholt his 600th career victory.

Despite not being present due to low blood pressure, Bomholt picked up his 599th win Saturday by routing Adams Central 62-49. Other wins this season have come against Elwood, Fort Recovery, New Castle and Muncie Central.

Bomholt said a major key to getting this far is just being around for as long as he has.

“I’ve outlived most of them,” Bomholt said. “It’s true. There’s a lot of guys I coached against that have retired or some have passed away. I’ve just been very very fortunate that I’ve had kids that were easy for the most part to coach. …

“Basketball has been really good to me. I never would have imagined this when I started coaching.”

This is Bomholt’s 44th season at the helm of a team. He had a rather unconventional start to his career.

During his third year as an assistant coach at Anderson Highland, Bomholt took over as interim coach following Bob Fuller’s death in the 1979-80 season. (He died of a heart attack mid-game against Lapel.) Bomholt led the team to an undefeated regular season and their second sectional championship before falling in the regional.

The Elwood alum then landed his first full-time coaching position with the Patriots a year later. Bomholt’s first stint with Jay County (1980-84) lasted four seasons. During that time, he coached Jay County to a 57-39 record and secured back-to-back-to-back sectional titles (the fifth, sixth and seventh in school history).

Bomholt bounced around a handful of places, including two stints with the Southwestern Rebels. During his first stretch with SHS, Bomholt went 78-35 and made it all the way to the state finals in 1998. Then from 2015-2019, he earned a 72-53 record while winning two more sectional titles.

Bomholt returned to Jay County after a season off and has since gone 50-46 – he is 109-83 in his ninth year as a Patriot – to bring his all-time record to 599-390 (60.6%). He is sits fifth in wins among active coaches in Indiana only behind J. R. Holmes (917) of Bloomington South, Gene Miller (717) of Washington, Dave McCollough (636) of Connersville and Make James (621) of Triton Central.

“I want to shy away from it, because the emphasis should be on the kids,” Bomholt said. “It’s been neat because we’ve been fortunate to win, I think it’s 13 sectionals now. We’d like to win one more before we leave. I’ve been to the state finals, fortunately as a coach. I’ve gotten to coach in the semi-state and win at Hinkle Fieldhouse. There have been a lot of little things like that, but more important than all of them is I’ve got a chance to develop relationships with some really neat kids.”

Bomholt has the chance to pick up the 600th win Tuesday as the Patriots travel to take on South Adams (2-6, 0-2 ACAC) in the first round of the ACAC tournament. The Patriots (5-4, 1-1 ACAC) currently are the 168th in the Sagarin ratings, while the SAHS sits 316th. John Harrell predicts that the Patriots will win 53-40. Should Jay County lose, Bomholt’s next opportunities would come on Jan. 21 at Hagerstown or Jan. 24 when it hosts South Adams.

At the time of print it is still uncertain if Bomholt will be ready to return to the sidelines for the ACAC tournament opener against the Starfires.

“I can tell you this, it’s not something I started out with as a goal,” Bomholt said. “No way did I even think about the different levels, 100, 200 wins, never thought about it. I just wanted to coach. When I started I wanted to teach math.

“The more I coached, the more fun it was. … I want to be in a position where when I leave and retire, there’s a reason, and hopefully a good one, that kids remember playing for me.”