There’s been no slow start for Joe Chirhart at Centralia College.
Last year, Chirhart left his job coaching at Tenino High School to join the CC men’s basketball coaching staff. By January, he was running the Blazers’ recruiting operation. Not long after the 2022-23 season ended, he was named Jason Moir’s successor as head men’s basketball coach.
And since that’s apparently not enough, as of these past few week’s he’s Centralia College’s interim athletic director.
“It’s a good busy,” Chirhart said. “I’m a big fan of controlled chaos.”
On the court, Chirhart is hoping that the recent chaos — sorry, controlled chaos — in Michael Smith Gymnasium will yield results as the Blazers embark on their new season, aiming for their first winning season since 2018-19.
CC, which went 6-22 last year, opens its run this weekend with three games at the Treasure Valley Kickoff.
Chirhart will be rolling with a roster heavy on depth but light on experience. Of the 17 players currently listed on the squad, just three — Landon Kaut, Ian Coates-White, and Joshua Forster — are carryovers from last year, and Kaut was the only one of those to start multiple games.
Joining that trio is Nahashon Henderson-Crews, who saw a bit of playing time at Shoreline last season, Bryson Williams, who has the most NWAC experience of the bunch after averaging over 20 minutes per game coming off the bench for Wenatchee Valley last winter.
The rest of the Blazers are newcomers. But with a new coach, and in a program trying to pull itself out of a rough few years, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
“I think it’s more building something new,” Chirhart said. “I knew coming in that we wanted a culture change. We had some individuals last year. I think every time you get an opportunity to grow culture, it’s really important who you bring in.”
Not all of the new faces are strangers, though. Leading the new crop of Blazers is a quartet of freshman from the Salt Lake area. Malakai Gray, Spencer Gill, Ethan Carlson and Corbin Naron — who came north together on a showcase team for a recruiting trip, and Chirhart took them all in as a package deal.
“I thought it was a really good opportunity to bring in three or four kids who have some continuity and some relationships already,” he said.
In the post, the Blazers brought in 6-foot, 7-inch, 205-pound Orion Dybdahl from Anchorage, Alaska; so far, he’s been their top option both scoring-wise and on the glass down low. On the perimeter Kevin Williams — Bryson’s little brother — comes to the Hub City from Tahoma High School to run the offense.
But if there’s a strength to this CC team, it may be in its sheer depth. In the Blazers’ preseason scrimmage against Olympic on Nov. 11, Chirhart played 15 guys, and he said that’s not something that’s going to change once the games that matter begin.
Oh, and the Blazers won that scrimmage 116-104, if that’s any indication of how CC is going to approach this season.
“I’m hoping that’s kind of our identity: get up and down the floor, knock down some threes,” Chirhart said. “That’s the goal. If anything, we’re going to be a hustling, balls-to-the-walls kind of team. We’ve got some full-court stuff, we’ve got some halfcourt stuff, we’re a lot of man. It’s a good little atmosphere, it’s a good culture.”
