For Andre Thomas, excelling at two sports was nothing out of the ordinary. The Bosse Bulldogs football and girl’s basketball Head Coach grew up as a standout in both sports, playing each at the collegiate level. After graduating from Evansville Harrison, the star quarterback went to the University of Toledo to play football and then eventually transferred to SIU-Edwardsville, where he played one season at guard for the Cougars. Thomas then came back to Evansville and after finishing up his degree at USI, he volunteered at Harrison, helping Harvey Robbins run the Warriors football squad.
A year and a half later, Thomas moved to Winter Garden, Florida and landed his first two coaching jobs at West Orange High School as the Assistant Varsity basketball coach and the wide receivers coach for the football team. Four years later, Thomas returned home to Evansville and initially was only offered the gig as football coach. During that same offseason, the Bulldog girl’s basketball coach, Angie Oliver, had decided to step down after 20 years of leading the Lady Bulldogs. After hearing of the opening, Thomas offered to coach both teams if there weren’t another candidate found. 2 months before the basketball season was set to tip off, there hadn’t been a coach selected. Bosse already had its man on staff and it was Andre Thomas. “I was really excited for the opportunity”, Thomas says, “but I was even more excited to get that opportunity here where I had been given so many as a kid growing up.”
With having experience in playing the two sports split between two collegiate institutions, Thomas implores some of what he learned from his coaches while still in school. As a freshman in football at Toledo under the direction Gary Pinkel (current Missouri Tigers head man), Thomas learned balance and priorities. “He was always school, family, whatever your religion was and then football,” he recalls. A year at backup guard under Marty Simmons (current Evansville Aces coach) at SIUE taught his players to pay innate attention to detail. “I’ve never been around someone who paid so much attention to the little things and just making sure you did all the little things right.” Both coaches added a bit of flavor to Thomas’ own coaching style.
When he accepted both jobs, he knew that there would be an adjustment period. “Challenge is time, structure and family (he has two small children).” Additional challenges are presented when considering the vast differences in the two jobs. “The approach I take with the boys is different than the approach I take with the girls and vice versa, but I think having both helps me in both parts.” The same patience that is used with the girls can be applied to the football team, while the intricate planning and attention to detail that is used in football is also used toward his basketball team. Piecing together different strategies from each sport has been successful for Coach Thomas.
Now in his 3rd season as the girl’s basketball coach and in the offseason before his 4th football campaign, things are headed in the right direction for Coach Thomas and his Bulldogs. After a 3-17 start in football, the 2013 Bosse football team went 7-5. “I couldn’t have been more proud of a group of kids to be able to battle back and have that resilience and hang in there from the year before.” A winning attitude was not only instilled in his football team, but also in the girl’s basketball team, who’d gone from the last-place team in the SIAC the year before Coach Thomas arrived to winning the conference the following season. “We had the talent; I just gave them some new inspiration and direction.”
Andre Thomas is ready to build off of the Bulldog’s first winning football season since 2000, but not before trying to make some noise in the girl’s basketball tournament first. His team has made the sectional championships the past two seasons and will play Evansville Mater Dei on February 14th.
