Last September, Scott Sage became the new youth director at First Baptist Church of Crothersville.

He was happy to be back working in the community he grew up in, and he wanted to become more involved.

As a longtime volleyball savant, Sage spoke with Crothersville head coach Carly Blevins last fall about wanting to get involved with the program, whether it be as a volunteer or a paid assistant.

Sage didn’t join the staff last fall, but a couple months after the Tigers’ campaign came to an end, Blevins decided to resign as head coach, and Sage was urged to apply for the job, as if he needed any more of a push.

In mid-March, Sage was officially named as the new head coach for Crothersville volleyball.

“I’m a Crothersville guy,” Sage said. “Born and bred here, I went to high school here and I’ve always been interested in Crothersville sports.”

Sage’s path to becoming so invested into volleyball wasn’t the most direct. He ran cross-country and played basketball at Crothersville High School and graduated in 1987. He watched his sister win the Southern Athletic Conference title with the Tigers’ volleyball squad in 1989, but Sage went to college at Indiana State University, graduated in 1992 and still didn’t have much volleyball in his life.

It wasn’t until he came back from college and had a friend in Seymour who played volleyball, so Sage started going to open gyms with him. From there, Sage was hooked.

“I’m just a guy that likes to compete at everything,” he said. “I don’t care if it’s a board game, throwing darts, shooting pool, I want to get good at it to be able to compete.”

So Sage got good at volleyball and played in tournaments and enjoyed every moment of it. It was around 10 years after college that he finally got into the coaching side of the game.

Sage has been coaching volleyball in some form since 2002, whether it was coaching club teams or at the high school. He started out at Hauser and was there for five years as an assistant, then become the junior varsity coach at Crothersville for one season. But his job changed, so he had to give that gig up.

He was a head coach at Scottsburg, assistant coach at Jennings County for six years, assistant coach at Seymour for a couple of years and then went back to Hauser, which is where he has been for the previous four years.

“I’m coming from a program that is really solid and is going to have a nice run the next couple of years, and I’m coming to a program that needs some love and care, needs a lot of coaching and has a lot of opportunity to get better,” Sage said. “It just needs a culture change and shock.”

In the 2021 club season, Sage coached at HAVOC in Columbus, and he had five kids from Crothersville Junior-Senior High School on his team.

“I handpicked those kids because they were Crothersville kids and I wanted to help them out,” Sage said.

Four of those kids will be incoming freshmen this fall at the high school, and one will be going into eighth grade.

“We just need to develop some enthusiasm and energy as well as all the X’s and O’s when it comes to volleyball,” Sage said. “I just have experience, and I think I can help create and maintain a positive culture.”

Enthusiasm and energy, the two E’s, are a big message Sage likes to have for coaching.

“I don’t think anything great can happen without enthusiasm and energy. That’s what I like to tell my kids,” he said. “I’m going to be very big on those things.”

Sage also made it a point of emphasis that he doesn’t just want to be all in on Crothersville volleyball, but he wants to support all of the other sports in the community, as well.

He plans to have team camps and summer workouts, provide opportunities at the club level and more. He knows it’ll be a challenge, but Sage has high hopes of turning the Crothersville volleyball program around.

“My biggest thing is to help create and maintain a positive culture there,” Sage said. “It’s not just about volleyball. It’s about life lessons sometimes. It’s about work ethic, body language, giving effort and all of those things. Because I live here and love the community and the school, I think I’m the right man for the job.”