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BEAVERCREEK — John Ahrns , a 10-year assistant, is expected to become the next boys basketball coach at Beavercreek High School.

"I was offered the job over the weekend and hopefully it's just a formality that the superintendent (Denny Morrison) and the board of education approve the hiring," Ahrns said Monday night, June 2, after his team won its first game in the Fairmont Summer League.

"Obviously I'm excited about the opportunity to be head coach at the school where I played."

Ahrns, 31, is a 1994 Beavercreek graduate. He was the varsity assistant and junior varsity coach the last eight years for Charlie Back, who stepped down as head coach in April. He had been an assistant with Larry Holden one season and Buzz Seilhamer for another before Back took the job.

He is a graduate of Miami University and teaches Advanced Placement United States History at the high school. He takes over a team that graduated seven seniors, was 12-11 in the 2007-08 season and 5-5, good for third place, in the Central Division of the Greater Western Ohio Conference.

"We really need to improve in all areas from last year," he said. "The guys need to come together over the summer and find their roles as players. We need to be more efficient offensively and become a lot tougher on defense, Our defense hasn't been as much of a factor in games the last couple of years as it has been in the past."

There is not a lot of size coming in from the reserve, freshman and middle schools teams. "We have a lot of 6-2 and 6-3 guys and maybe a couple who are 6-4," said Ahrns. "But we don't have the 6-6, 6-7 or 6-8 players we've had in the past.

"So we're going to have to be sound fundamentally and be good shooters to offset our lack of size."

Ahrns said most of the previous staff will remain but a couple of new assistants will be added.

Creek was late in filling the spot because Back wasn't sure he was ready to quit coaching until mid-April even though he had announced his intentions to resign in late February.

"I never felt any rush to fill the spot because we had a lot of very qualified in-house candidates and I wasn't sure what teaching openings we might have," said Creek athletic director Ed Zink. "Even if we had found someone from the outside we had wanted, we couldn't have hired them unless we had a teaching opening in their area."

Zink said there were about 35 candidates for the job, three from outside the school system who got some serious consideration. "We had some good candidates but our search committee didn't feel they had better qualifications than John, who is a Beavercreek guy who knows the kids and knows the system," said Zink. "He's put in his time and deserves a chance to be a head coach."

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2251 or dlong@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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