Collinsville Kahoks’ girls basketball coach resigns after 21 seasons in purple
Collinsville High School girls basketball coach Lori Billy has decided its time to move on.
A Collinsville native and the Kahoks head coach for the past 10 years, Billy, 51, announced her resignation after leading her squad to a 16-14 record this past season.
“I’m going to miss coaching a ton,” Billy said. “I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster the last few months, first of all going back and forth about making the decision, then wondering if I made the right decision. But the emotional roller coaster has been huge. I’m going to miss these kids. They have been my life for the last 21 years and they will continue to be.
“But I’m excited about the future and having some free time to do some things that I haven’t had the time to do in the past.”
A Collinsville graduate, Billy began her coaching career in the 1998-99 and was an assistant for Steve McFall for 11 years. Hired as the Kahoks head coach in 2010, Billy led Collinsville to four winning seasons and finishes her career with a 130-142 record. She earned her 100th career victory be beating Okawville in 2018.
Collinsville Athletic Director Clay Smith said Billy has done an excellent job in leading the Kahoks girls basketball program.
“Coach Billy has been an enormous asset to this athletic department and Girls Basketball Program both on and off the court in her career,” Smith said. “You can always find Coach Billy working tirelessly to help all our student athletes at CHS be successful. Coach Billy is a true Kahok and will be missed.”
Billy, who teaches second grade at Kreitner Elementary School in Collinsville also plans on spending more time with her parents with her free time. But, she added, the toughest part of her decision was telling the girls in her program that she was resigning.
“That was tough. A lot of girls were like ‘yeah, we get it,’ and that they understood. But a few of my seniors said, ‘but who are we going to come home too?’ That broke my heart,” Billy said. “I told them that I’m still going to be here for them I just won’t be standing in the same spot that I have been.
“The same thing for the girls who are going to be in the program. I’m going to be here as much as I can be. I still want to be involved.”
Coach helped Collinsville get best of Edwardsville
While competing in the same Southwestern Conference with perennial state power Edwardsville, the league titles and long postseason runs have eluded Billy during her coaching career. She said coaching good competitors and good citizens is more important than trophies.
“The city of Collinsville can be very proud, because it has great girls,” Billy said. “As a coach, sure I would have liked to have won more games, but the one thing I will always say about the girls who played for me is that they worked hard in practice and gave everything they had every minute they were on the basketball court. As a coach, that’s all I can ask.”
One of the highlights of Billy’s coaching career came in 2015 when on a December night, Collinsville broke Edwardsville’s 89 game conference winning streak in a 70-68 win. Billy made sure her Kahoks weren’t intimidated by the Tigers on that historic night.
“I still kid (Edwardsville) coach Lori Blade about it, but I’m sure she will agree that it was a great game,” Billy said. “I think we were down like 15 points but we kept chipping away. I think we made like 11 3-pointers that night.
“Then with time running down, Kaitlyn (Fisher) hit that little runner that was almost like a layup to win it. That was a great memory and one like many others that will be with me forever.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 3:14 PM.
