Chris Lindsay steps away from coaching after 41 years

Jason Moyer, the athletic director at Berean Christian Academy, jokes that Chris Lindsay knows everybody in Knoxville.

Moyer cannot remember a time that Lindsay, the boys basketball coach for the Eagles over the past six years, did not stop and talk to somebody.

It is one of the reasons that Moyer will miss Lindsay, who retired in May due to personal reasons.

"It's a really big loss," Moyer said. "You're losing a Hall of Fame coach, but for me as a new athletic director, I'm losing a guy who I've learned from over the last four or five years.

"He's said that he is available to us, but not having him around campus every day will be an adjustment. I haven't thought about how much we'll miss him, but it will be a pretty big hole when we start school back up in August."

Lindsay has been a fixture on the sidelines in Knoxville for 41 years, coaching in 770 basketball games and 459 baseball games since he was first hired at Northwest Junior High in 1976.

He rose to the high school circuit in 1980 when he went to West, where he spent 28 years. In that time, he coached the Rebels' boys basketball team for 22 years and the baseball team for 18 years.

Before coming to Berean Christian, Lindsay spent three years at Powell as an assistant principal and athletic director. In six seasons as the Eagles' boys basketball coach, he went 83-76 and was named District 2-A Coach of the Year for the 2015-16 season.

Lindsay was also the founding president of the KIL Basketball Coaches Association.

"(Working at Berean Christian) has been an incredible blessing and experience that I will always cherish," Lindsay wrote in his letter, dated March 12, announcing his retirement at school year's end. "... Wherever I go and whatever I do, my goal is to always be a reflection of Jesus Christ and to make a positive impact on the lives of those I encounter.

"I hope to leave things in a better state than I found them in every aspect of my working career as well as with Berean Christian. I believe ... that my mission has been accomplished."