SCOTTSVILLE – Marcus Carter has sat through news conferences in the past when Allen County-Scottsville, yet again, was announcing a new boys’ basketball coach.

But never before has Carter, a rising senior, recalled the incoming coach taking time to individually meet with players before his public introduction.

Nick Chaykowsky did just that Friday afternoon in the library at Allen County-Scottsville High School – shaking hands with every player in attendance to get acquainted early.

That stuck with Carter, who will enter his fourth year as a Patriot now playing for his fourth head coach.

“Him coming around shaking hands like that was something big,” Carter said. “It just gives a feel that he really wants to be here and he cares about the team moving forward. Being through several head coaches, you get the feel that he wants to be here and we have some stable ground to stand on as the season moves forward.”

Chaykowsky, commonly referred to as “Coach C,” wants to build a foundation quickly in Scottsville. He was introduced Friday as the 14th head boys’ basketball coach at ACS, replacing Lex Lindsey after just one season where the Patriots went 10-19 with a first-round exit in the District 15 Tournament.

A Florida native, Chaykowsky brings 30 years of high school and college coaching experience to an ACS program that hasn’t won a district title since 2010. He and his family moved to Kentucky in 2008, where he served as head coach at Ballard Memorial for four seasons before coaching at Union County from 2012-14.

He left the high school coaching ranks to work as an assistant at Shawnee Community College in Ullin, Ill., while still teaching math at Henderson County High School.

Chaykowsky has a .609 winning percentage in 30 years of coaching and has a 211-208 record at the high school level.

Before moving to Kentucky, he was a head coach at three high schools in Georgia and one in Florida dating back to 1997. That small town coaching experience, plus moving closer to his wife’s family made Allen County-Scottsville an attractive place.

“I feel like there’s a lot of great things at this school that can become parts of a tradition that we want to try to build on because I feel like there’s a great staff already here in place,” Chaykowsky said. “There’s a lot of similarities here and when I was the head coach at Ballard Memorial High School, a small community, and we accomplished a lot of success at that school and they had never had success there ever.”

Chaykowsky made it clear he’s not interested in rebuilding the program after Lindsey’s only season. The two coaches spoke extensively prior to Chaykowsky interviewing for the job. The new coach said he even spent two hours on the phone Thursday night with assistant coaches going over the roster and how they can build on what Lindsey worked toward last season.

“(We discussed) the nature of how the guys are eager to learn and their willingness to come to practice and work,” Chaykowsky said. “Also, the fact that they were competitive this year. Wins and losses aren’t always the best measure on how a team can be competitive, but there’s a lot of talk of how successful the team can be in the future.”{&end}