Noblesville coach Donna Buckley is among the six Indiana high school girls basketball coaches that have been chosen as 2021 Bob King Coaches of the Year by their peers in the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association, it was announced Tuesday.
Mark Redding of Carroll (Fort Wayne), Chris Seibert of Crown Point, Debbie Smiley of Brownsburg, Jared Rehmel of Linton-Stockton and Scott Schoen of Silver Creek have also been selected as honorees for the 2020-21 season through voting that occurred from late January through early March, IBCA executive director Steve Witty said.
Honors are awarded according to IHSAA district boundaries, and two coaches from each district are recipients – Redding and Seibert in District 1; Buckley and Smiley in District 2; and Rehmel and Schoen in District 3.
Buckley is honored after directing Noblesville to a 21-5 campaign that included the championship of the Zionsville Sectional. Buckley has compiled a 183-114 in 13 seasons at Noblesville with two sectional crowns. In 21 seasons as a varsity coach, she is 279-188 with previous stops at Fort Wayne South (10-11 in one season) and Greenfield-Central (86-63 in seven seasons). The former Donna McCarty is a 1993 graduate of Clinton Central and later played basketball at Taylor University for two seasons. She started her coaching career as an assistant at South Adams for three seasons before becoming head coach at Fort Wayne South in 2000-01. Buckley was an IBCA District 2 Coach of the Year in 2015. She was named a Junior All-Star assistant coach in 2014. She also was named a senior All-Star assistant in 2020 and again in 2021 as the 2020 games were canceled.
These six coaches will receive plaques as an IBCA District Coach of the Year during the 2021 IBCA Clinic, the in-person portion will be held on Saturday, Oct. 16 at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis. There also will be a virtual portion of the 2021 IBCA Clinic where this year’s Coaches of the Year — six girls and six boys — will make a video presentation on a basketball-related topic. The “virtual clinic” is planned to be available online starting April 23.
The Coach of the Year award is named for the late Bob King, the IBCA executive director from 1984-94. King was a Lebanon native who coached at Sacred Heart and Shortridge high schools in Indianapolis before serving as an assistant basketball coach at Purdue and later as an assistant and associate athletic director at Purdue.
