Taylor Sparks has stepped down as girls’ basketball coach at University Heights Academy. The school confirmed his resignation Friday morning and said a search to find his replacement would begin immediately.
“This is the fourth program I’ve been at in 44 years and just feel like it’s time,” Sparks said. “We have a strong junior class returning and a couple of young kids that can play, too. I wanted to leave the program in good shape and give the new coach a fighting chance to continue what we have been doing here.”
Sparks was 151-119 in ten seasons as Lady Blazer coach, including four straight 20-win seasons from 2012-15. The first year of that run saw UHA win the Second Region All-A title in 2012 and earn Sparks KABC region coach of the year honors.
UHA put together back-to-back years of Eighth District titles and advanced to the Second Region title, losing to Henderson County in the championship both years. The 25 wins by the 2013-14 team remains a school record.
The 2015 team won the last of three straight district titles before losing to Webster County in the first round of the region tourney.
“Those three years stand out to me where we won district titles, because no one foresaw that when we took the program over,” he said.
UHA won four All-A region titles in Sparks’ 10 seasons as head coach, including the school’s only win in the tourney in 2014. The last of the four All-A titles came this season.
“This year’s run to the All-A State Tournament is a highlight of mine given how we started the season. We were a thin team but came together and nearly pulled off the big upset in the district tournament,” Sparks said.
Sparks comes from a long-line of coaches in his family and played high school basketball at Central City High School. He was the boys’ basketball coach at Graham High School for 16 seasons where he won 124 games in the highly-competitive 10th District that contained the Muhlenberg County schools before consolidation.
Sparks was an assistant coach at Muhlenberg South before taking the athletic director’s job at Trigg County in 1994. He was a boys’ assistant coach at Trigg from 1994-99 and retired as AD in 2006.
He served as boys’ assistant coach under Randy McCoy at UHA from 2007 before taking the Lady Blazer job in 2009.
Sparks said he will remain at UHA to teach and even be a volunteer coach if needed. However, as most coaches do, he did not rule out a return to the bench as a head coach.
“Until then, I want to spend more time with the grandkids, and my wife Denise definitely wants to travel more,” he said.
