The passing of the latest South-Western City School levy earlier this month not only revived the sports programs, but also presented an opportunity for coaches Mike Cavey, Neil Hohman and Chaz McCutcheon.

All three were named to take over as a head coach at Central Crossing High School this winter.

Cavey has been hired to lead the boys basketball program while Hohman now heads the girls basketball program. McCutcheon takes over the wrestling team.

"I lived in the South-Western district ever since I moved to Columbus," Cavey said. "My wife graduated from Grove City and I never realized what the levy entailed until I was in the middle of it. I'm happy for the kids. They now have a chance to have that normal high school experience back."

Cavey replaced Chris Barnes, who was the boys basketball team's only head coach in its seven-year history. Barnes had a career record of 53-94 as the Comets won at least 10 games the last three seasons. Central Crossing has yet to win a first-round Division I district tournament game.

Cavey spent the last seven seasons as an assistant at Ohio Dominican. He is a 1994 graduate of Dayton Oakwood and played basketball for two years at Bowling Green before finishing at Wittenberg in 1999.

"Playing college ball seemed like a natural progression to get into coaching," Cavey said. "I was fortunate to be an assistant right out of college. After a year as an assistant at Oberlin, I was the head coach from 2000-2002."

Central Crossing finished 11-10 last season but graduated the program's all-time leading scorer in Bryce Barnes. He finished with 1,188 points (19.2 per game).

"We're going to instill our philosophies this year," Cavey said. "We didn't have a lot of time before the season began. We'll have our kids playing hard, playing disciplined and giving everything they got when they're out on the floor. If we can do that, we'll be moving in the right direction."

Central Crossing also lost its girls basketball coach, Sarah Chevalier, who accepted a head coaching job at Lancaster last spring. In Chevalier's only season, the Comets finished 13-9 for the program's first winning season since 2004-05.

Hohman coached the boys program's freshman team last season.

"Coaching the boys, I didn't get to see the girls play too much," Hohman said. "From the players and coaches, everyone is new. We're getting to know each other and finding out where everyone fits in."

Hohman graduated from Hopewell-Loudon in 2001, where he started on the varsity team for three seasons. He played basketball at Otterbein and graduated in 2005. As a freshman, Hohman was on the school's 2001-02 national championship team.

"Naturally, being a teacher I wanted to get into coaching," said Hohman, who coached the Comets girls tennis team in 2008.

As for the wrestling team, Comets coach Chance Van Gundy led the team to its second consecutive OCC Division title and third overall last season.

However, Van Gundy left the program to take over at Ready. So, Central Crossing looked to its middle school coach, where McCutcheon has been the head coach the last two seasons.

"Central took the biggest hit with kids leaving their wrestling program," McCutcheon said. "Of all four high schools, the other three coaches stayed and kept communications. With Central Crossing's coach leaving, the communication stopped and a lot chose to leave."

The Comets were expecting eight letterwinners to return. Instead, McCutcheon inherits a young and inexperienced program.

McCutcheon graduated from Westland in 2002. While attending Rio Grande, he was a volunteer coach at Gallipolis Gallia Academy.

"This year will be tough because as a team, we are so young and inexperienced," McCutcheon said. "As of right now, only two letterwinners return from last year. We have to focus on individual goals and how those will help us overall as a team."