JAMESTOWN – Guilford Technical Community College has hired veteran coach John J. Patty of Greensboro to be athletic director and men’s basketball coach for the Titans.
Patty will oversee a program that also includes women’s basketball and volleyball teams and a men’s baseball team. The teams compete in Division II of the Carolinas Athletic Conference, which is a part of the National Junior College Athletic Association.
Patty replaces Phil Gaffney, who built the GTCC athletic program over a span of five years. Gaffney became athletic director and men’s basketball coach at Georgia Highlands College in Rome, GA, on Aug. 15. His responsibility will be like the job he took at GTCC in 2005 -start athletic teams for a college that doesn’t have an athletic program.
Patty, a former basketball coach at Dudley High School and Page High School in Greensboro, was assistant coach for men’s basketball at GTCC for four seasons under Gaffney. He didn’t coach last season.
A Chicago native, Patty is a 1970 graduate of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.
Before going to Dudley High to coach and teach history in 1979, Patty was
physical education and athletic director at Latin School of Chicago (1977-79) and physical education and athletic director of Washington School in Chicago Heights (1970-77).
Patty has coached at other schools in Illinois and Michigan, and won a state championship at Washington School in 1975.
He also has coached at college basketball camps at Duke University, Air Force Academy and Davidson College. He considers Wake Forest basketball coach Jeff Bzdelik, formerly coach at Air Force and at Colorado, as one of his best friends, having known him for about 30 years.
Since leaving fulltime teaching, Patty has been involved in several business ventures.
(GTCC Press Release)
Good choice GTCC!