When you watch the Butler boys basketball team play this season, you’ll notice a glaring difference on the Bulldogs’ sideline.
Or should we say, a glaring absence.
For the first time in 15 years Cervantes Boddy will not be seen on Butler’s bench in any capacity.
The long time coach departed after the 2022-23 season where the Bulldogs finished 18-10 overall, finished second in Region 4-AA play and advanced to the second round of the Class AA state playoffs, one year after losing to Westside in the state title game.
Boddy has “retired” from coaching basketball, as he puts it. He’s still around, though, having taken an administrative position at Glenn Hills High School. He’s also keeping an eye on the local basketball scene with particular — and understandable — interest to what’s happening on Lumpkin Road as his longtime understudy, Chaz Clark, takes the reins of one of the most successful basketball programs in the Augusta area.
And according to Boddy, he has absolutely no reservations about the kind of job Clark can do.
“It’s his calling,” Boddy said. “Which is why I had no issue retiring. I knew the program would be in the absolute best hands.”
It was in pretty good hands with Boddy as well. From Boddy’s debut on the sidelines as Butler’s assistant junior varsity boys coach in 2008 and the JV girls coach in 2009, through his 13-season tenure as head boys coach, Boddy has won far more than he’s lost, including a plethora of region championships, two shots at a state title and a host of athletes who have graduated and gone on to college because of their time in Butler’s program.
Clark, himself, is one of Boddy’s products. He was a senior on Boddy’s first varsity team back in 2010 when the Bulldogs finished 25-8 and played for a Class AAA state title, falling to state champion Columbia.
“That was the year with Chris Washington, Dan Lambert, Jeff Menefee,” Clark recalled. “I was part of that team.”
‘Groomed’ for coaching
According to Boddy, though, Clark’s contributions as a player were bigger than stats. And the way he carried himself and approached the game then was a foreshadowing to what he would become 12 years later.
“Chaz has actually been coaching since he was a player,” Boddy said. “He never saw the game the way players do. He’s always had coach’s vision.”
That’s the reason why it didn’t take Clark long to know what he wanted to do with his life after his high school playing days were done. He started his college career at West Georgia in Carrollton as a sports management major with aspirations of becoming a college coach. But it took him just a year in college to discover that he wanted more than just that.
“Since early middle school, I’ve always loved the game of basketball,” Clark said. “I wasn’t fortunate enough to play in college, but I knew I wanted to be around the game. I wanted to make impact on the lives of young men, and I’m also a huge history buff. I’ve always loved history. So I said, ‘Where was the one place where all three things — basketball, history and impacting young men — can meet?’”
It was about that time that Clark called up Boddy and told him what he wanted his life to look like.
“I was 19 and still a freshman in college,” Clark said. “I told Coach that I knew 1,000% what I wanted to do with my life. I want to teach and I want to coach young men. So, after I left undergrad at West Georgia, I entered the education program at Augusta University, and from that moment on, I’ve been groomed to do what I’m doing now.”
Even with all of that expressed passion for coaching and teaching, Boddy said he tried to test the genuineness of his former player’s aspirations.
“I tried to talk him out of coaching when he first told me about him wanting to pursue it as a career,” Boddy said. “But he was adamant and persistent as hell. He went on to school, graduated, got certified and came on back home to Augusta. I knew how great he would be, so I had to hire him and have him work for his alma mater, Butler. He had been ready, trained and groomed for the spot he’s currently in for many years, and the program is in the absolute best hands.”
Clark says his desire to impact young men both on the court and in the classroom came from surrounding himself with mentors like Boddy, Westside boys basketball coach Jerry Hunter, Shawn Bradley, a long-time JV coach at Richmond Academy as well as Clark’s own father.
He also mentioned former Butler football coach Ashley Harden as a mentor. Clark played football for Harden during the 2010 season on a team that was one of the last to produce a winning record.
“When I look back on my life and think about the men who have really impacted me the most, I realize that almost every one of those men was a coach and a teacher in my life,” Clark said. “And that’s what helped me realize that just purely basketball wasn’t everything when it came to making a difference in these young men’s lives.”
In fact, when Clark met Boddy at age 14, it actually had nothing to do with sports.
“It was really just a student-teacher relationship when we first connected,” Clark said. “And that’s had a lot to do with my rearing and raising as a coach. I know a lot of [Coach Boddy] is in me.”
That doesn’t mean Clark is going to try and be a carbon copy of his mentor and predecessor. To be sure, Clark has already experienced some success on the Butler basketball sideline. In his five previous years as JV head coach, Clark has coached the squad to four championships, including back-to-back titles in the 2018-19, 2019-20 and 2021-22, 2022-23 seasons.
For that reason, Clark and his current players are, by no means, strangers.
“I think our team’s biggest strength right now is continuity,” Clark said. “Every guy on this team has been coached by me on the JV squad except for one or two transfers. They’ve been coached by me and all won JV championships under me. So in taking this job, I say I’m not rebuilding but really just re-tooling what’s already taken place since I’ve been here.”
Mastering the learning curve
Clark acknowledges that the pressure and intensity of coaching has increased drastically since taking the program’s helm. And for that reason, he keeps his finger ready to press coach Boddy’s or one of his other coaching mentors’ phone numbers when he needs them.
“It’s really just the administrative part that I’ve got to get used to,” Clark said. “The paper work and all the things that go along with basically being the CEO of the program. And then you balance that with the basketball and coaching part and your personal life, and it’s definitely been a challenge. The stakes are higher, the challenges are much tougher. I think I see or encounter at least one thing I’ve never had to do before in this role every week.
“But I talk to coach Boddy at least once a week, as well as those other coaching mentors, and it helps keep me where I need to be.”
Butler’s off to a 1-2 start this season, with a season opening 50-45 loss to Jones County, a 42-36 win last Saturday against Evans in the 100 Black Men of Augusta Classic and a 57-49 loss to Class AAA power Cross Creek Tuesday.
The tough schedule will prepare Clark and his squad for a tough region that includes defending back-to-back state champion Westside, as well as Thomson and Putnam County which are perennial good.
But so has Butler been. And both Clark and Boddy say that there should be no drop off with regard to the lofty expectations crafted by Butler’s steady success.
“Moving into this position, the expectation for myself and from coach Boddy is to take it to another level,” Clark said. “Boddy always tells me that he doesn’t want me to just continue what we’ve been doing, but that I understand wholeheartedly that it’s my time now and that I’m groomed for this, and that we won’t stay the same but level up.”
Even just three games into the season, Clark feels the weight and heft of expectations that comes from a winning program. And instead of running from it, he’s learning how to embrace it.
“We’re working on the small things every day,” Clark said. “We’re getting back to working on fundamentals every day. Those things that will eventually get us to higher heights, because we know that whatever we want, we’re gonna have to pay the price for it. No one’s going to hand us anything. We’ll have to pay the price for whatever we want. And what I want for these guys is to be great men and citizens first, great students, second, and third, well, the athlete part — if we take care of the other things, the athletic part is easy.”
As for Boddy, he’s looking forward to watching lots of high school basketball this year as a fan instead of a coach. He’s already seen the Bulldogs play in this young season and will do so again as the season progresses.
He tells his former understudy often that he’s there if needed. But Boddy’s also got faith that Clark may find himself comfortable in his own head coaching skin quicker than he perhaps thinks.
“I’ll be there for him 110% in this process, just as I have always been there for him from the time he and I first met,” Boddy said. “But I doubt he will need me. He was born to do exactly what he is doing now, which, again, is why I had no issue with retiring. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he is already much better than I was.”
