In Ginyard, O’Connell’s Loss is Columbia’s Gain

Ron Bailey, Publisher

September 7, 2006 – Ron Ginyard, a former assistant coach at Bishop O’Connell High School (Arlington, VA) has been a mainstay at that perennial hoops powerhouse for four years now. In 2006-2007 that program, led by Joe Wootten, will have to make due without Ginyard, as he has accepted the Director of Basketball Operations position at Columbia University.

Joining Joe Jones’ Columbia program is a great opportunity for Ginyard, who shared his motivation for accepting the job. “I’m at this point trying to learn the business” he said. “It is a good chance to work with good people, and I’m learning more about basketball. I’m getting more experience. It will be a new challenge”.

Given Ron Ginyard's penchant for hard work and considerable talent coaching and managing people, expect him to be a great addition to Joe Jones' Columbia University basketball program.

“My first day was Labor Day - September 4th” stated Ginyard from his office on Columbia’s New York City campus. Working on a national holiday is emblematic of the effort his new position demands, as Ginyard’s job responsibilities are vast, despite not recruiting or working directly with Columbia’s players. “I will be in charge of team travel” he said. “Making sure we have transportation, hotel arrangements, and cash so we can eat, equipment and so forth”.

That in and of itself would be a full time job, but Ginyard is also expected to manage “film exchange” with opponents, as well as function as a liaison between Columbia’s academic community, and its basketball program. This includes not only monitoring the “academic progress” of Columbia’s players, but “communicating with professors” to ensure no snafus develop.

Ginyard has also been charged to “work closely with the Sports Information Director” at Columbia to facilitate media requests for “interviews, schedules, basically anything to do with the media”, as well as oversee the team’s managers. Though he’s not recruiting per se, Ginyard does coordinate recruit’s visits to Columbia’s West Side Manhattan campus. He also is charged with “putting together our coach’s clinics and camps”.

In sum, he stated “Basically, I’m in charge of the day to day operations of the program”.

Preparing Ginyard for this plethora of responsibility was O’Connell and Wootten. “O’Connell is a program that operates as close to a Division I program as it can at the high school level”, he said. “It recruits, travels, and plays a very intense schedule…As an O’Connell coach, you put forth a level of commitment that prepares you”. He provided that effort in addition to maintaining a full-time job.

Ginyard, seen here coaching O'Connell in Kenner League action this season, feels as though his experience learning at that school under Joe Wootten helped prepare him immeasurably for the Columbia experience.

In relation to Wootten, Ginyard credited his ex-boss greatly. “He was the reason I got into coaching” recounted Ginyard. “I just wanted to see what it was about”, and as such coached at a summer camp. Wootten liked what he saw, and soon thereafter offered Ginyard a coaching position.

The next four years proved an incredible learning experience for Ginyard, who labeled Wootten “a tremendous help”. Not only did observing O’Connell’s leader coach and conduct clinics prove instructive, but he learned invaluable lessons from Wootten “watching film” and just being involved in the program. In Ginyard’s estimation, he is fortunate to have been provided the opportunity to work with Wootten four hours per day, during the period he did.

As to be expected, Ginyard did have mixed emotions about leaving O’Connell, given the relationships he built there: those in the program, including the players, felt similarly. “I could definitely tell the kids were disappointed, specifically the kids I helped recruit there” he said.

According to him, those young people included the incoming freshman class, “kids, who never truly had an opportunity to work close with me”. Nonetheless, he felt given the kind of people in O’Connell’s program, those young guys “were very supportive” of his decision.

Ginyard is currently adjusting to Columbia, and New York City. He and his wife, Thérèse have moved into their Harlem apartment - a one bedroom flat that is considerably smaller than the Clifton, VA condo they still own. As such, the Ginyards, relative newlyweds, “had to consolidate some things”. Living in Manhattan is not totally new to Ginyard, since he attended Pace University after graduating from Paul VI (Fairfax, VA) High School.

Ggiven his talent, from both a hoops and personal standpoint, Ginyard could have accepted a job in Antarctica, adjusted, and excelled. But he did not, he’s in the Big Apple, and poised to make a positive contribution to Columbia University and Jones’ program - much like he was able to do at O’Connell.

Congratulations are in order for Ron Ginyard. He has left one excellent situation, and entered another. Expect big things for Ginyard, in the future.