By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Former Seaman boys basketball assistant Josh Gomez felt like it was time to go after his first head coaching job at the high school level.
And after being a finalist for the Vikings' head coaching vacancy that was eventually filled by Joe Smith, the stars lined up to send the 38-year-old Gomez a few miles down Highway 24 as the new head coach at Rossville.
Topekan Josh Gomez has been named head boys basketball coach at Rossville after four season's on Craig Cox's Seaman staff. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]
Gomez, a Topeka High graduate, takes over the Bulldawg reins from another Trojan product, Brandon McDonnell, who replaces the legendary Ken Darting at Shawnee Heights after leading Rossville to back-to-back Class 2A state tournament berths.
"I interviewed for the Seaman job and Joe got it and Joe's a good friend of mine,'' Gomez told TopSports.news. "He and I actually coached together at the middle school for a couple of years. He left and took the Jeff West job, so I got to have head coaching experience with our senior group that were just graduating this year, and then I moved over to the high school and I have been here the last four years.
"When coach McDonnell took the Shawnee Heights job I knew that I at least wanted to apply and hopefully get an interview for the Rossville job and everything just kind of fell into place from there.''
Rossville graduated a talented senior class off last season's 17-8 team, but Gomez is confident that there are talented players in the Bulldawg program that are ready to step into key roles next winter.
"They graduated seven seniors last year so they're losing a lot, but that just means there's plenty of opportunities and playing time for these younger classmen to come in and show what they can do,'' Gomez said. "All the coaches that I've talked to out there are really high on next year's junior class, so I've heard great things about them.
"I got to go meet the team (Thursday) and we've also got some good freshmen and sophomores, so there's going to be plenty of playing time to go around and the kids are going to have a good time.''
Gomez was part of Craig Cox's final staff at Seaman this past season as the Vikings posted a 23-5 record and finished third in the Class 5A state tournament.
