By RICHIE HALL
Bryan Hanan has spent the past six years with the Carmel High School tennis program, helping many young people achieve their goals of winning state championships.
Now, Hanan is heading to Franklin Central, where he will be working toward his goal – teaching at the high school level. And helping the Flashes tennis program along the way.
Hanan stepped down from the Greyhounds teams several days ago to accept a teaching job in the Franklin Central school system. He will also become the Flashes’ high school tennis coach.
“This all started out with a teaching move, and I wasn’t going to go anywhere without a teaching opportunity,” said Hanan.
Hanan will be teaching seventh-grade Project Lead The Way in Franklin Central schools, and he hopes to eventually move up into the high-school teaching ranks.
“They had a middle school opening,” said Hanan. “They sound pretty confident that they’ll get me in the high school. I miss that area. I really do.”
In addition, Hanan noted that Franklin Central is due for some big growth over the next few years. He wants to help the tennis program – which is familiar to people in Hamilton County due to the Flashes playing in the Hoosier Crossroads Conference – start to realize its potential.
“I’m excited to start over again,” said Hanan, who coached at Greenwood, Southport and Warren Central before coming to Carmel. “There are going to be 4,000 kids over the next five years at Franklin Central. To me, it’s a sleeping giant.”
Of course, Hanan was part of a giant at Carmel. He started as the boys assistant coach in 2016, then moved up to head coach in 2018. The Greyhounds won state championships all six years Hanan was there, a record for most consecutive state titles.
During Hanan’s tenure, Carmel also won four individual singles state championships (Patrick Fletchall in 2016-17 and Presley Thieneman in 2018-19), and has a streak of three straight doubles state titles (Uday Lomada/Jones McNamar in 2019, McNamar/Srisanth Malpeddi in 2020 and Malpeddi/Jack Jentz in 2021). Ethan McAndrews and Jay Natarajan won state doubles in 2016.
Hanan began coaching the Greyhounds’ girls team in 2019. The team fell in the state semi-finals that year to Cathedral 3-2, then had to sit out a year in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But Carmel came back to win two state titles in 2021 and 2022. Also, Leila Antony and Lauren Littell won the state doubles title in 2019.
“I’ve had a great time there,” said Hanan. “It was a very tough move. I have a lot of strong relationships with parents there. It was not easy.”
And that’s one thing that Hanan wants to make clear: His move to Franklin Central is strictly a professional move.
“Our administration at Carmel was phenomenal,” said Hanan. “Our players are phenomenal, our parents are phenomenal. There never was an issue. This was straight a teaching move.”
Hanan is proud of the fact that Carmel alumni come back to cheer on the Greyhounds even after they have graduated, which the coach said was one of his goals when he took over the program.
“Every year when we get to state, not only do our alumni show up, our former parents show up,” said Hanan, who noted that’s what he is “most proud of.”