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BELOIT -- Former West Branch standout Scott Loudon is back home.
After being the Minerva junior varsity head coach for eight seasons, Loudon is returning to West Branch as the varsity head coach.
He was hired Thursday night in a unanimous vote by the West Branch board of education.
"(At Minerva) I was able to learn a lot of different stuff on how they do things," Loudon said. "The head coach down there was great to me. In my mind, he was the perfect way to be a head coach. He was good with the kids, great with the basketball knowledge, so I was able to learn different approaches to doing the same things."
Loudon is a 1992 graduate of West Branch High School, leaving as the school's career scoring leader in football and basketball.
In 1990 and 1991, Loudon earned first-team All-Northeastern Buckeye Conference honors in football and basketball. He won the NBC boys basketball league MVP in 1991-92 season. He was apart of three Warrior teams to win the NBC league title and finished as a regional runner-up twice --once in football and once in basketball.
"That was a long time ago," Loudon said. "Probably will be something the kids will joke about a little bit, but that was 30-something years ago. We may pull up some examples of the successes we had, but, in my opinion, most of these kids want to learn about today -- and I'm cool with that."
He takes over a West Branch team who went 14-10 overall last season, including a 5-5 mark in the Eastern Buckeye Conference.
"I've been with them for the last few weeks," Loudon said. "We have some good, experienced guards. I've got a nice, young, big kid that will be a sophomore, and a shooting guard who will be a senior. I think we'll be able to do a lot of different things. Inherintly, they well be competitive regardless of what we do."
West Branch gave Loudon his first taste as a basketball coach as a junior high coach for in the mid-1990s. After two seasons, Loudon became the freshman coach for 12 years. He also served as the junior varsity coach for six more years.
He attended Mount Union College and was a member of the inaugual West Branch Hall of Fame class in 1997.
Loudon replaces Michael Brown, who was hired May 22 as the new head coach at Hudson High School.
Brown led the Warriors to a pair of Eastern Buckeye Conference titles and a 69-28 record in his four seasons as West Branch's head coach.
Hudson competes in the Suburban League National Conference along with Brecksville-Broadview Heights, North Royalton, Nordonia, Stow-Monroe Falls, Twinsburg and Wadsworth.