Youngest basketball coach in the state? That might be Hazen’s 23-year-old

One of the challenges of being a 22-year-old head boys basketball coach?

“I would walk into the door for these summer leagues and people at the front are like, ‘It’s $5 to get in,’” Kyle Baldwin said. “And I go, ‘Actually … I’m the coach.’”

He turned 23 last week. But last month he was hired as the next boys basketball coach at Hazen High School of the Class 4A North Puget Sound League’s Cascade division.

Baldwin is likely one of, if not the youngest, coaches in the state, though the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association does not keep a record of that.

Baldwin didn’t play basketball in high school, his highest previous experience was as Hazen’s C-team coach and a varsity assistant, and he frequently has to correct parents who keep politely asking if the whipper-snapper is helping out – no, he’s the coach.

Does this mean anyone can be a high school basketball coach?

University of Washington guard and Hazen graduate Dominic Green doesn’t think so.

“I’ve known him for a while now and he always wants to surround himself with the game,” Green said. “He has a lot of potential to be a good coach.”

He was a sophomore at Hazen when Baldwin was a senior team manager. Baldwin had played basketball up until middle school and he said he envisioned himself being a top contributor on the high school team, but he had to stop playing because of injuries to his knees.

“Even when he graduated he was still coming back and working with us,” Green said. “And when he was a manager, he was taking stats, learning the playbook, studying. He might not have had the ability to play, himself, but he was able to really learn the game.”

Kentwood coach Blake Solomon and Union coach Blake Conley were 30 and 32, respectively, when they met in the 4A state title game this past season. And they were considered young.

But 23?

Odyssey Charter in Palm Bay, Florida, played last season under 19-year-old Joshua Watson. And two years ago, 23-year-old Mitch Thompson led Oregon’s Irrigon High School to a state championship in his first year there.

A press release from Hazen said the school was looking forward to Baldwin bringing some continuity and stability to the program, which has gone through three coaches in the past three years.

“My dream job has been to coach and my plan is to be at Hazen for 15-20 years, if not more,” Baldwin said.

“I am a really good manager of people and personalities. People who know me know I’m a funny guy and I can loosen people up and I think I’m a good motivator, too. The teams I’ve coached, I’ve really tried to approach them with the mental side of the game, so we work a lot on not paying attention to calls from the referee, being a good teammate and getting guys to believe in one another. That will beat skill most every time.”

Baldwin spent his four years at Hazen as a manager, though he says he was more like an assistant coach. His first year out of high school he was coaching with the Highlander Select basketball program. And a year after that, former Hazen coach Ryan Thompson asked Baldwin if he’d coach the high school’s C-team and be a varsity assistant while he was also studying at Bellevue College.

New head coaches came, but Baldwin stayed.

And when Templeton resigned after the season, Baldwin decided to apply for the head job.

“I thought, what the heck? I’m here already,” Baldwin said. “As soon as I applied, emails spread and parents were writing that they should hire me, all the kids were on board, and I was already serving as the interim coach in our summer league at Auburn Riverside and I was running practices.”

Baldwin is also a paraeducator at Hazen and on the last day of school he was told he’d be Hazen’s next head basketball coach.

“I was just kind of stunned,” Baldwin said. “I left after talking with our AD for about 20 minutes on where to go from here. I walked to my car after and I just started crying. I just got so emotional about it, thinking about telling my family.

“For a 40-something-year-old who has been around and gets a high school coaching job is cool. But for a 22-year-old – that just doesn’t seem very common.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2017 at 3:07 PM with the headline "Youngest basketball coach in the state? That might be Hazen’s 23-year-old."