Tommy Sorrell made his retirement public in February from the Bellevue girls’ basketball team after 17 seasons as head coach of the team.
Fast forward nearly six months and Sorrell will take on a new challenge at the same school, named the next leader of the boys’ basketball program on Monday. Sorrell takes over for Jim Hicks, who stepped down from the position recently after 14 seasons with the team.
Sorrell, a 1995 Bellevue grad, spent 24 seasons on the sidelines with the girls team, now he heads over to boys.
Sorrell’s accomplishments at Bellevue set new coaching standards. He won 247 games with the girls program and coached in 490 games. He put together 10 winning seasons, including the last four in a row, with just two losing seasons in the last 13. He posted a career-high and program-best 22 wins in the 2023-24 season as the Tigers made their second regional tournament appearance during his tenure.
Sorrell’s Bellevue teams have won or shared five Northern Kentucky Athletic Conference Division III regular season championships, including the last three. They have won the past two NKAC Division III in-season tournament crowns and been in the final every year.
“What I’m most proud of is every year, whether we won conference or not, we put a competitive team on the floor,” Sorrell said in February. “These girls have played some tough games against girls from much bigger schools and won.”
He’ll inherit a Bellevue boys team that had just one senior on the roster last season and went 10-20 with a quarterfinal exit to Newport in the 36th District tournament. The last Bellevue boys team to reach the region tournament was in 2008.
His two kids just graduated from the high school, TJ and Taytem.
