Married, longtime RHS coaches leaving at school year’s end to be closer to family

RANDLEMAN — There are very few reasons for high school coaches, who have been as successful as Randleman High School’s Daniel Mitchell and Kerry Mitchell have been in their respective sports, to leave the school they have built incredible programs at.

One reason, and perhaps the most important reason of all, is to get closer to family and that’s the reason the married coaching couple will resign from Randleman High School after the current season.

Daniel Mitchell has built the boys basketball program into one of the top programs in the area, while Kerry Mitchell has done the same with the volleyball program, reaching the Final Four in the 4-A classification this past season.

Daniel Mitchell has been at RHS since the 2009 season, coaching football and basketball, taking over the varsity boys basketball program in 2012.

Kerry Mitchell’s volleyball teams have won at least 17 matches in their last seven full seasons — the 2020-21 season was cut short due to COVID — and she has led her teams to 20-win seasons on three occasions, including a 23-5 record this past campaign.

“We’re moving to be closer to her family,” Daniel said of the move to Iredell County, where they are building a home on land Kerry’s family owned even before North Carolina became an official state. “Her dad grew up across the street, now they are two minutes from the house. 

“We talked about this years ago, but not to slight any of the guys behind them, this senior class were freshmen and I wanted to coach this class through. If we waited too much longer, our boys would be in middle school and it’s trickier and harder to pull the trigger in that regard.”

The current senior class includes Connor Cassidy, Brandon Boone, Nazir Staten, Damari Garner, Pacey Wagner, John Kirkpatrick, Brycen Nall and Jackson Cook. 

“For neither of us, it’s not about coaching, the administration or pay,” Daniel said. “It’s purely a move to go back to family. To the one thing that is probably most important.”

After his stint as an assistant and head coach of the jayvee basketball program, Mitchell took over the varsity program in 2012 and the Tigers surged immediately. He took a team that was 2-19 and in his first year as head coach improved to 18-8.

The RHS boys varsity basketball program has won at least 15 games 10 times in Mitchell’s first 13 years with this year’s team sporting a 9-8 record heading into action this week in a very difficult Piedmont Athletic Conference. Overall, Mitchell has led the Tigers to a 214-118 record, a winning percentage of .644.

“Things I am going to miss on a personal level are the friends I made through coaching,” Daniel said. “Some of my best friends I have in life are through coaching. Coach (Shane) Timmons, Coach (Jake) Routh, Coach (Brian) Hughes, I’ve been friends with them as long as anyone in my life. Another thing is not being at a school where I’ve been a part of for so long.”

And there’s another special bond Mitchell said he will miss. The bond with the Randleman community.

“There is such a community feel,” he said. “I’m not (from Randleman) and people I don’t even know will come up to me and say good game coach or terrible game coach. I’ve always liked that vibe in school.”

Mitchell, a History teacher at RHS, said he does not have a teaching or coaching position as of yet for the next school year, but hopes to stay in that field somewhere in or around Iredell County.

There are plenty of memories Mitchell said he made while at RHS, his first job after graduating from Western Carolina. One was defeating Newton-Conover 62-59 in the third round of the state playoffs two seasons ago. 

“I never expected to win the state title in Randleman, I secretly hoped, but there is always a Reidsville or a Salisbury,” Mitchell said. “When I was with Smoky Mountain (where he helped while going to college), we never made it past the third round, so that was a goal I had, to take a school and make a run.”

While at RHS, Mitchell used a philosophy he learned from a book written about Detroit Pistons superstar Isiah Thomas. That’s where the three letters stitched on the back of the RHS jerseys came from. KTS stands for Know The Secret, referring to what it takes to be successful. 

“It’s putting the school and the program above yourself,” Mitchell said.

The Mitchells have certainly coached with that philosophy.

Kerry Mitchell said time has flown by since when the move to Iredell County was first discussed years ago.

“Whenever we started to make the jump, it seemed like this was forever away,” she said. “It’s gone fast.”

Mitchell has built the volleyball program into one of the best in the area. It didn’t start out well as the Tigers won just a few matches during her first year in 2013 and she vowed never to let that happen again.

“The biggest thing we did was make sure we were offering opportunities to play in the off season,” she said “A lot of spring and summer training. Most do club ball and that’s important, but you have to get our kids in our gym around our system.”

The program showed some improvement over the next few years, but really took off in 2018 when the Tigers finished 17-8 and 9-3 in conference action. From 2018-2025, the Tigers were 141-52, including 43-10 the last two seasons.

Mitchell said she’s learned a lot about teaching and coaching while at Randleman. In her early days, she said, she was impatient with both her students and players. When she grew up as a student-athlete, she said not showing up for school, not obtaining good grades and not performing well were not options. She said she’s learned that teaching and coaching is just as much about relationships built than anything else.

“There has to be a relationship with the student and the player before they will even listen to what you have to say,” Mitchell said. “Before it was like, ‘why don’t you want to stay three hours after practice to work on things?’ There was a lot of growing up on my part. Just understanding you have got to know the person as a whole, understand families and each girl’s strengths and weaknesses. 

“I grew up and realized for me to stay in teaching and coaching, I can’t react to every single thing. You have to pick your battles, love them up and encourage them.”

She said the way the administration and the coaches bent over backwards to help her family deal with teaching, coaching and raising two sons was key to making everything work.

“The other coaches at the school knew both of us and how much time we were giving up and they were willing to help us make it happen,” Mitchell said. “Especially the football coaches and the basketball coaches. We had a whole athletic department willing to work with each other.”

Mitchell said she will have plenty of great memories to take with her, including:

■ Helping those girls who wanted to continue their volleyball careers after high school find colleges and universities to continue their careers.

■ The 2021 season, when the RHS student-body embraced the team, showing up at every home game and providing an exciting environment.

■ And, of course, this year.

“This year was way better than I could have imagined,” she said. “It was an awesome way to go out.”

She said she will also remember her first graduating class, which consisted of just three players, Bailey Strider, Kari Price and Kendal Hamilton.

Mitchell said she hopes to be able to add boys volleyball at West Iredell in the very near future. Asheboro High School started that program this year and will begin play in March.

“I haven’t had to start a program from scratch in a long time,” said Mitchell, who lived in Spain and went to UNCG before beginning her RHS career. “Daniel and I have talked about this a lot. Whatever our coaching looks like, we can always build on the experience we had at Randleman. Randleman took a chance on me when I was 25 or 26 years old. I have learned a lot. We just hope the very best for the coaches and for the players. We hope they just keep building.”