By Maurice Patton

Megan Moore is home.

Sort of.

The former Spring Hill basketball standout, a two-sport collegiate athlete who established her hardwood coaching career with a couple of Williamson County stops, was announced Thursday as the new girls coach at Columbia Central.

“I’m from Maury County, so … coming back was something I always wanted to do,” the former Megan Anderson said. “I feel like there’s always a time you’re led and I feel like this is it.”

Moore’s hiring fills a vacancy created with the March 5 dismissal of Joshua Bugg, who in his fourth season at the Lady Lions helm led the team to its first Region 4-AAA tournament berth in eight years. Since then, Central principal Roger White was suspended and subsequently reassigned, with Kevin Eady succeeding him officially on July 1.

With prior assistant coaching assignments at Summit and Centennial as well as assistant athletics director duties at the latter, Eady selected Moore over five other finalists for the position.

“She has a plan already in mind for not only this year. She has a plan for the future and working with our younger programs,” Eady said of the 35-year-old Moore. “She has a complete and thorough knowledge of the game.

“She’s a player’s dream as a coach because of the energy she brings. She brings that intensity. She’s been in the game as a player on the youth level, the high school level and the college level, she went right into coaching, and she has coached not just girls but boys basketball at the high school level.”

Moore worked as an assistant to Centennial boys coach Pete Froedden during the 2018-19 season, helping the Cougars to the third of three consecutive Region 6-AAA tourney berths.

“I’ve known (Moore) since my days at Lipscomb,” Froedden said. “She was a student at Austin Peay. They came over and worked camps and I always thought, if I ever get a chance to hire her, I’d hire her in a second. She commanded the attention of every kid – boy, girl, didn’t matter. Just the passion. She’s got ‘it’.

“Her specialty, what she’s best at, is connecting with kids. They want to play for her.”

Though she’s been off the floor for the past couple of seasons, Moore is surprisingly familiar with the Lady Lions that return from last year’s 18-12 finish and looks forward to working with them.

“The guards are good. We’re very guard-heavy. There’s not a lot of height,” she said. “Being able to watch the girls, they are very coachable and very driven. They want to be good. I’ve watched them grow over the past four or five years — knowing what (the program) was four or five years ago – especially this upperclass, with what they’ve been through and what they’ve turned the program into.

“You can tell the ethic is there. They’re fearless, they’re ready to compete. I think they’re excited to go into a new district and compete in that district.”

Along with the bulk of last year’s roster moving into District 12-AAAA, Moore will also have the majority of last season’s coaching staff. Carden Virgo and Megan Kilburn, who served as assistants under Bugg, will continue in those roles, Moore said.

“Carden and Megan have done a phenomenal job to go four months without a (head) coach,” Moore said. “Knowing they were pretty much stepping in as ‘interims’, they ran a program just as if they were the head coaches, with there being uncertainty. Their love for the kids is unmatched because they didn’t have to do what they did, but they gave those kids everything a stated head coach would have done.

“To go in and consider not having them wasn’t even on my mind. They’ve been there, they love those kids obviously. I haven’t even given it a thought, not having them, because I need them.”

With Moore’s hiring, as well as the appointments of Whitney Kovach and Milton Nettles as assistant principals, Eady’s focus turns to the softball coaching position that was filled this season on an interim basis by Hannah Cole following the January resignation of Shelby Burchell Tietgens.

“We got a couple of names over the week, some people that might be interested,” Eady said. “We will be getting in contact with them.”

Girls basketball coaching vacancies remain at Culleoka and at Spring Hill.