Fulton's John Fisher fills Powell's girls basketball vacancy

​John Fisher is going home.

Powell High School announced Tuesday that Fisher, who has spent the past 11 seasons leading Fulton's girls basketball program, has been named to fill the same position at Powell.

"Him being from Powell, it was a win-win," Powell principal Chad Smith said. "His track record speaks for itself, and all of that is great, but when it comes to the type of person he is, you're not going to find a better individual and leader with integrity and the character he has to put in front of your student-athletes. Bringing him back home to Powell where he played and where he is from, it was a home run."

Fisher, who will join the faculty next school year, played at Powell from 1993-97 under then-coach Mike Ogan.

In his 11 years at Fulton, he posted a 215-90 record, won four District 3-AA championships, two Region 2-AA championships and made two Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association state tournament appearances - the Lady Falcons were state runners-up in 2014 and lost in the quarterfinals to East Nashville this past season.

"It's easy to go to Powell, but it was brutally hard to leave Fulton," Fisher said. "It's a place that I love - I love the people there and the kids were great. It was incredibly tough."

The opportunity to coach his alma mater and try to build it up to the regional power he made Fulton, though, was too much to pass up.

"You're always looking for new challenges, and it is going to be a challenge, but I look forward to it," Fisher said. "Being able to do it that is home is going to be fun. You get so accustomed to winning, and now you move on to this new chapter and it is going to be fun to try and get it to that level."

Fisher takes over for Christin Webb, who resigned in April after coaching the Lady Panthers for three seasons. Over that span, Powell went 52-35 with three straight appearances to the region tournament.

Webb was the recipient of the 2016 PrepXtra Stan Ballard Courage Award after both of her children were born with Krabbe disease - a degenerative disease that affects the myelin sheathe of the nervous system and occurs in just one of every 100,000 births. Webb and her husband Kyle's first child, Mabry Kate, passed away from the disease on Feb. 7, 2015.

"She did a great job and left the program in great shape," Smith said. "I support her and still do, and I appreciate the job she did while she was here."

Webb is just part of the success that Powell has enjoyed since Fisher was last part of the program. He is trying to uphold that tradition and potentially ascend it to new heights.

"That program has enjoyed a lot of success throughout history," Fisher said. "You want to do as well as you can do because the community gets behind it - I don't know that there are too many communities that get behind them like Powell does - so it would be a great thing (to achieve that same success)."