To see him in person, you would never know he might be a varsity basketball coach commanding the attention and respect from much taller high school boys.
To see him in person, you would never know that this one-time JV role player would be able to fill your head with an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge on the game he loves.
Yet, 31-year-old Jared Shetzer, son of Joe and Connie, certainly has earned a wealth of praise from those in the know at Bay High School, in Bay Village, west of Cleveland.
A graduate of Clyde High School and the University of Toledo, Shetzer has built a very high-powered offense and entertaining team in just his third year on the job after serving just one year at Bay as its freshman coach.
Before arriving at Bay he served as a long-term sub at Clyde and Genoa High School where he coached seventh grade. Jared is making great things happen there.
After a 10-13 initial season with Bay as its head coach, his teams’ records have quickly improved to 15-8 in 2014-15 to an impressive 12-2 slate thus far this season. In his last 8 games, the Rockets have been averaging 96 points a game, including a school record 105 versus Vermilion two weeks ago.
His team is timed in practices, so they meet their goal of shooting a quality shot every seven seconds when they possess the ball. The Rockets start two athletic 6-foot-7 posts who can score and run the floor.
Around the two ‘bigs’, Jared has an umbrella of awesome firepower led by 1,000 point 6-3 forward John Kolz. In addition other highly-efficient ‘chuckers’ are junior Jack Jellen, and freshman, Mark Poiynter.
Jared said he, his wife Erica (Langenfelder) and cute little boy Jett are very happy in Bay Village. It has a small town feel to it which they like for it reminds them of growing up in Clyde.
“I really like it here, and the support for schools here is certainly one of the best parts,” Shetzer said. “I see many folks involved in healthy activities around town, and I think those folks’ kids are growing up with good role models.”
When asked how his quick success with just a few years of coaching experience, a trio of themes evolved: support, commitment and work. His players tend to come from good homes where education and involvement in positive activities are regularly emphasized. If you look at his players’ parents, most are health-minded and involved in an active lifestyle. These attributes then are modeled as their kids have grown.
Shetzer claimed that although most of his boys play one or two other sports, they remain faithfully committed to basketball.
“I don’t think we do anything that different than most other programs,” he said. “I think, perhaps, we just spend more time at it.”
Seven months of the year the Rockets are devoted to the things which make them fundamentally-advanced high school basketball players.
His players gave Shetzer high praise on his commitment to them.
“He definitely runs the practices and spends the time,” Kolz said. “He works on our game, but definitely helps us with understanding the importance of teamwork and developing character as a person.”
A Coach Paul Westhead disciple, Jared always envisioned being coach of a fast-paced uptempo team. Westhead was the highly popular and very radically different coach of Loyola Marymont from the 1980s.
Like his idol, Jared is the director of team drills that emphasize running and more running and making at least 25 3-pointer attempts from quality shots.
“Our practices may sometimes look like chaos, but realistically, they are quite well-structured,” Shetzer said.
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