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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
What happens when you combine a unique weight room policy with coaches who accommodate each other’s needs and administrators who have backgrounds in coaching?
You have the current state of athletic success at North Miami High School, who followed perhaps the greatest athletic year in school history in 2024-25 with an even better year in 2025-26.
In case you might have missed it:
North Miami won their second straight sectional title in football. That marked the first time in 31 years that they have won back-to-back sectionals.
In volleyball, they were 1-30 as recently as the fall of 2020. This past fall, they went 20-10. It was their best season in eight years.
In girls golf, they shot a 403 and finished fourth at the Western sectional, missing going to regional by one stroke. It was the best sectional finish ever in school history. That followed a conference title in the fall of 2024.
They won a Class 1A state title at team state duals in boys wrestling, and they won the sectional and regional team titles. They also had their first ever wrestling state finalist in Hartley Hoover, who will wrestle collegiately at the University of Indianapolis. Braylon McIntire and Rex Moore were also state placers.
They won conference, sectional and regional titles in girls basketball. The conference title was their first in 30 years. The back-to-back regional titles marked the first time in school history they have done that.
They won 15 games in boys basketball. That was their most wins in 16 years, and they beat Southern Wells and Tri-Central for their first two sectional game wins in 15 years.
They won just their third sectional title in school history in baseball, and when they beat Monroe Central the following week, that gave them their first regional.
Their team score of 374 at the Peru boys golf sectional equaled their best in the last 22 years.
In girls track, sophomore Andrea Hoover made the state finals in the shot put.
“It was a great year, an exciting year,” football coach, athletic director and 2008 North Miami grad Joe Grant said. “From the fall to the spring, every season there was success. There was success for boys sports and girls sports. We had success by freshman kids and seniors. So top to bottom. It was just a really exciting year.
“You go statistically, it’s the most successful year in North Miami history. You go back the last two years, it’s the most successful two years in North Miami history. You go back the last four years, it’s the most successful four years in North Miami history. This year, it’s kind of built up to that point.”
With success over a broad range of sports, one wonders about the sports culture at North Miami.
Grant said it is a word one must be careful in using. To Grant, culture is a word that transcends sports. Culture does not lead to winning as much as it has to be there whether you are winning or losing.
“I think culture is what you and who you are all the time, not just when things are good,” Grant said. “When things aren’t going great, they’re going to say your culture’s bad, but it’s the same people coaching the same way doing not the same things, per se, but there’s people that might want to throw stones when things aren’t going well, and they say that culture’s bad. But I think culture is sticking with the kids and kids sticking with each other.”
Grant speaks of the Smith brothers as examples of culture. Logan Smith, who will be a senior this fall, was first-team Junior All-State as an offensive lineman, a state qualifier in wrestling at heavyweight and the starting third baseman on the baseball team.
His older brother Austin played on teams that were not as successful, but kids like Austin Smith set the culture so kids like Logan Smith can reap the rewards.
“I think our culture’s great because we’ve had success the last couple years, but we’ve also had trying times,” Grant said.
Grant then began talking about Max Craft, who will be a junior in the fall. Craft set out himself to become the “de facto,” as Grant put it, leader of the volleyball student section. He is an example of culture too.
“I think that senior class, they were just amazing athletes,” volleyball coach Brianne Chumbley said. “I think Joe and I both had been involved with that group tremendously since even fifth grade on up. I coached Grace Sailors and the Sparkses (twins Zoey and Chloe) in basketball starting in fifth, and I was their coach in fifth, six, seventh and eighth, and then I became the volleyball coach. So it was just an extremely fun year, and I think boys and girls athletes, that group was extremely strong, and they kind of just showed that.”
‘The teams that have success, the kids that have success, they lift weights’
In addition to being the football coach and athletic director, Grant also teaches the weights classes.
He has worked at North Miami since 2017, and he said they broke ground on the weight room about a year after that.
“If people haven’t been out to North Miami and seen our weight room, they should,” Grant said.
Grant said the kids are personally invested in its upkeep.
“It’s a large area with new equipment,” Grant said. “And what’s great about that is too, talking about culture, we’ve had students … I think about Reese Hoover, who graduated three years ago. She did a lift-a-thon to raise money to put new bars in the weight room. Students raised money to get new med balls. Things like that. All the stuff in there has really been done by the kids. Our school invests in getting that new weight room. It’s a great facility.”
Kids can take a weights class during the school day. Grant, former girls basketball coach Lori Working and assistant football and softball coach Brian Raber all teach weights classes. There is also a coach in the weight room after school for those to get their lifting in before practice if they do not take weights class.
North Miami also ties one’s eligibility to play with spending time in the weight room.
“And then our kids have really just jumped in,” Grant said. “We have a requirement at North Miami that kids lift during the school year if you’re an athlete. That change, it was started by Adam Miller as the AD, who was doing a great job there, and I continued it. And we see dividends.
“The teams that have success, the kids that have success, they lift weights.”
Chumbley raved about the weight room culture that Miller initiated and Grant has continued.
“You had to have three lifts per week in order to play in a game, and that was mandatory, and we had to keep track of it, and I think that made a big difference having our athletes stronger,” Chumbley said. “I think I saw an increase in verticals in most of my girls, so I think the weight room, changing that, I know not everyone was a fan at first, but we were able to get classes for them. So if you were able to lift during school, that shouldn’t be a problem. That’s your weight class, and that counts as one of your three.”
Grant said the staff does not craft a weights regimen for specific sports. Rather, they want to develop a versatile athlete. Grant identified six different movements to learn in the weight room designed to help an athlete. The word he mentions over and over again is “explosive.”
“We kind of have the theory of you want to push, pull, clean, hang, squat, carry, move,” Grant said. “It’s just all athletics. There’s no basketball lift. There’s no football lift. There’s no baseball lift. There’s no cross-country lift. Every kid is going to power clean at our school. Every kid is going to squat at our school. Every kid is going to push and pull. They’re going to bench. They’re going to row. We’re developing the entire athlete.”
Grant hails Grace Sailors as an example of a weight room success story. Chumbley described Sailors as a “string bean” as a freshman and jokingly nicknamed her “Olive Oyl” after Popeye’s extremely skinny wife.
Now bound for Franklin College to play volleyball and track, Grant called her “one of the best lifters we’ve ever had at North Miami.”
Chumbley described Sailors as “ripped.”
“That made her hitting change tremendously,” Chumbley said.
Grant also said that Hartley Hoover started his high school career weighing 145 and ended it weighing 245 or 250 as he will move up to the heavyweight class at UIndy.
“When you see success, I think you can follow that with a correlation with working hard together in the weight room,” Grant said.
Chuck Evans just finished his first season at North Miami as the boys basketball coach. Prior to that, he worked at Caston for 11 years as an administrator, including time as a coach, athletic director, assistant principal and principal.
He helped promote the weight room as integral to success at Caston, and he noticed that at North Miami too.
“I know that the weight room is a priority there at North Miami, and I was very happy to see that because I came from a school that it was a top priority as well,” Evans said. “Because we thought the weight room was going to be something that was going to bring success to all the programs. I know that coach Grant coordinates that, and he works really hard with the kids. And they work in season and out of season, so I feel like his program develops them at the time they need to be doing it, whether they’re in season or out of season.”
Coaches and time management
Grant noted how many coaches at North Miami are from North Miami originally. Grant said that everyone on the football coaching staff played football at North Miami except for Bob Bridge, who was the head coach on North Miami’s 1993 state championship team and who is an assistant on Grant’s staff today.
Chumbley and softball coach Amanda (Nelson) Walters are North Miami grads too.
Grant said that the school has a policy as to how to deal with multi-sport athletes.
“Everybody got on board with it, whether they liked it or not at first,” Grant said. “Everybody got on board with, hey, kids that are in season, we’re going to let them focus on their in-season sport. So we kind of narrowed our focus and said, hey, kids that are in a fall sport, for example, you can only go to one thing per week for another sport. Not to punish a kid, but just to try to help them out with their time management.
“Because we’re already asking them to be good students. We’re asking them to go do community service. We’re asking them to try their best while they’re doing their sport and lift weights during the school day. It’s just something we try to do to help them, and coaches, they were on board with it. When you have coaches that are truly unselfish … and it’s hard especially when you have three-sport athletes. That’s where I think our coaches have done a really, really good job of working together – for the kids.”
The benefits for a coach to be accommodating to another coach is so that kids can learn how to operate under stress in a competitive situation. Chumbley moved a practice in July to allow girls basketball coach Nathan Curtis to hold a shooting camp.
“I can use Nathan’s group, for example, when they won and even Lori, when they were winning the regionals and going to semistate … you want to feel that again,” Chumbley said. “And that’s what I try to convey to my athletes. I won back-to-back sectionals (in 2001 and 2002), the only two sectionals at North Miami. And I want them to feel that.”
Evans noticed a winning mindset right away.
“I knew they had success in both boys and girls athletics,” Evans said. “Football and wrestling teams in boys. In girls, volleyball had been successful and girls basketball had been successful. I knew there had been success right away, and I think there’s a lot of camaraderie among kids too, and I think they all want to have success in all the sports. I could kind of see that within my kids and throughout other kids in the school.”
‘Every kid should wrestle’
Grant also had a stint as an assistant coach on Bill Hoover’s boys wrestling staff, and North Miami’s emergence as a wrestling powerhouse has more than coincided with their football success.
Grant said a winning football season leads to a positive mindset, whether an athlete plays basketball or wrestling in the winter.
Bill Hoover started the feeder program for wrestling over a decade ago before becoming the varsity coach.
Under Hoover, North Miami has won three straight boys wrestling sectional titles. North Miami has also won their first two regional titles in school history the last two years. They finished second at the Fort Wayne semistate behind only Delta, and they placed 12th at state.
North Miami, with a listed enrollment of 255, finished ahead of superpowers like Westfield, Roncalli, Noblesville, Fishers, Zionsville, Warren Central, Indianapolis Chatard, Lake Central, Merrillville, Homestead, Lafayette Jeff, Carroll (Fort Wayne) and Michigan City.
“I think this about the sport of wrestling,” Grant said. “Every kid should wrestle. I don’t care if they’re a boy, girl, whatever. You should wrestle at some point in time in your life just because it teaches you so much. It teaches you how to fail. It teaches you how to fall. There are so many things.”
He mentioned that 2026 grad Ryan Meredith, who was All-State in football and baseball and first-team All-Hoosier North in basketball, was a wrestler growing up.
“Wrestling is super important. In football, you show me our best tackler, and I’ll probably show you a wrestler,” Grant added. “When kids get to play in big games and be on a big stage, it’s easier to go do other things.”
Wrestling’s demanding nature puts it at the apex of competitive situations.
“I think the sport of wrestling makes everything in sports and in life a lot easier,” Grant said. “If you wrestle, everything else is easier.”
The parents
Grant was asked what role parents have played in the school’s sports success. He said a parent will “every once in a while” complain to an administrator or school board member, but that is the exception.
“We have great kids because we have great parents,” Grant said. “And they’re able to have their kids be coached. Now is everybody happy all the time? No, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, especially when kids are competitive. They want to go out there and want to be a part of what’s going on on the field or on the court all the time. But as long as you have great communication with your parents – and I think once again I tip our hat to our coaches – I think we communicate very well. As long everybody is under the same expectations that we’re here for every kid, yes, as individuals, but we’re here for a team to do something bigger than ourselves.
“Because that’s what it’s all about: Can these people become good community members and moms and dads down the road? That’s really what it’s all about.”
Said Evans about North Miami’s parents: “I felt supported there. And I felt like they were very much part of the culture there that helped with the success.”
Chumbley has a unique vantage point. In addition to being a coach, the former Brianne Sunday was an All-State volleyball player at North Miami before graduating in 2003.
Now as a coach, she tells parents during the preseason parents meeting of a 24-hour rule. In other words, parents are not to talk to her for 24 hours after a game. And be careful what you say to your child. If a parent brings up doubt at the dinner table, then kids might listen and take that doubt to the court.
She also has experienced the school’s success as a parent. Her son Evan is the second baseman on the baseball team and is also a JV basketball player, and she has two daughters who will be eighth-graders who play volleyball and basketball.
“I saw his confidence grow tremendously after that, and I think getting sports, even if it’s not my sport, I think you can see it in the athletes when they come back to you,” Chumbley said. “They have that more grit and desire because they see how much fun it is to get to those points.
“But it takes work.”
The administration
Grant said the administrative support started with former principal Matt Storm, who coached North Miami to a boys basketball sectional title in 2011.
Principal Karise Kabage is a former volleyball coach at the school, and former superintendent Kenneth Hanson is a former baseball player.
Grant, who is the fifth athletic director in nine years, also thanked his predecessors Adam Miller and Troy Hudson. He also said that the late coach and administrator Tim DuBois also had a hand in North Miami’s success.
“I just feel like they’re extremely supportive, especially if there are any issues,” Chumbley said. “Maybe not with my sport but other sports, like maybe a parent complaining. They will always be the first to have a coach’s back. I think that’s huge when you can count on your administration to have your back because you don’t always get that.”
