Ron White Enjoying His New Posts at The Stony Brook School

It didn’t take long for Ron White to make his return to the South Fork.

Now the director of basketball and head coach of the boys varsity basketball team at The Stony Brook School, White’s team was invited by Herm Lamison and his Southampton boys basketball team to play in the Mariner Athletic Club’s Holiday Classic just before the holiday break on December 22-23. Stony Brook defeated St. Dominic, 69-58, to advance to the championship game against host Southampton, where it lost, 86-65.

White had the tough task of taking over for New York State Hall of Fame Coach Carl Johnson at Bridgehampton after he announced his retirement in 2017. A three-time state champion under Johnson, White was a fairly successful head coach of the Killer Bees himself, having won a pair of Suffolk County Class D Championships, the program’s first-ever Long Island Championship, and a pair of appearances in the Regional Finals, one step away from reaching the New York State Final Four.

But last summer, during a ceremony at the Bridgehampton Child Care & Recreational Center that honored Black basketball coaches and mentors, White announced that he was stepping down from his posts at Bridgehampton to accept the new ones at The Stony Brook School, and that Johnson would be returning as head coach at Bridgehampton.

White, who was also the school board president at Bridgehampton, another role he eventually vacated to focus on his new roles at Stony Brook, said it was really tough leaving his alma mater and hometown, but that he is settling in nicely so far. The loss to Southampton was just the team’s second of the season with seven overall wins.

“The Stony Brook position has truly been a blessing. It’s been everything I expected it to be and then some,” he said. “Stony Brook School and its community is absolutely amazing. It’s very close-knit, comparable to the community we left which has great people, great energy and great ideas.

“I’m part of the advancement team here at the school, as well as the head coach and director of basketball, and we have some awesome plans down the road, as far as building out the school and possibly adding $30-$40 million to the 55-acre property that’s already here, so we’re super excited about that,” White continued. “And we’re also excited about growing and restoring a relationship with Stony Brook University, a program that’s only across the street from us. The university has been on this massive growth of its own for the past five to 10 years, so its focus has been developing themselves and they’ve done an amazing job with that. But the university and the Stony Brook School are well on our way as a union and the collaboration is going to be good for both parties.”

The Stony Brook School plays in the Private Schools Athletic Association, and as a Christian, co-ed, college preparatory boarding and day school for students in grades 7-12, recruiting is actually allowed at such schools. But White said recruiting is only a small portion of his job and something he didn’t really get to do with the limited time he had due to the timing of his acceptance of the job. White explained that he already had eight returning players this season, with five first-year players joining the team. With that many players already on the team, he was only able to recruit two more players to join the team.

And while being able to recruit from every corner of the world seems to be nice perk of the job, there are some obstacles that come along with it, such as team chemistry and dealing with a dozen or so different personalities who each have a different endgame when it comes to the sport of basketball.

“Similar to a college team, you have kids who are coming from all walks of life, from different cultures, and you’re asking them, in a matter of months, to all get on the same page, whereas at a public school, you might have kids who have played with each other for years,” White explained. “So everyone won’t talk the same, some may not even have the same expectations. It’s a very unique challenge. While we do have the space to create continuity here, your player from Queens may not understand what your player from China or Colombia is after, and we do have those vast differences here. There are some kids who are looking to play ball at the next level and those kids who just love the game of basketball, and as a coach you have to understand that first and foremost otherwise you’re not going to get the max out of yourself and your program.”

White also explained that he was missing literally half of his team due to the holiday break. At the Stony Brook School specifically, students are given 11 days off for Thanksgiving break and 18 days off for the Christmas break. Many of the school’s international students take the time to go back to their home countries, but White said one of the things he will look to change going forward is to slim those breaks down, at least for his players, because if the school is going to want to build a program such as a Long Island Lutheran as one of the top prep schools in the country, it can’t take off for such a long time during vital times of the season.

White was grateful for the time he had on the South Fork, he said. He made a weekend out of it with his team. Along with his mother he cooked for the team, which also got a meal at La Parmigiana in Southampton. White also took his team to his old stomping grounds at Bridgehampton, where his mentor in Johnson spoke to his team before playing at Southampton.

White seems so many similarities between Bridgehampton and Stony Brook that he wants to build a strong relationship between the two programs going forward.

“Coach Johnson and I still stay in touch on a weekly basis,” White said. “I do intend to bridge the gap between the two schools and expand on the family that could be Bridgehampton and Stony Brook. Both are communities that could build each other.”