Basketball season is going to feel a little different at Paintsville High School next year.
According to a report in the Lexington Herald Leader, veteran Paintsville boys basketball head coach Bill Mike Runyon stepped down this week. It’s unclear why Runyon left after 29 years coaching at Paintsville.
Runyon is perhaps best known across the state for winning the 1996 Kentucky boys basketball state tournament, with KHSAA Sweet 16 MVP J.R. VanHoose memorably leading the Tigers to the title.
Runyon has amassed 581 career victories, which makes him the sixth-most winningest coach among active coaches in the state, according to the Herald Leader. Runyon began coaching boys basketball in 1982 and continued until 2007. He had a short-lived stint as Paintsville’s football coach in 2012, before taking the reigns of the basketball program again later that year.