Cheek feels at home

CLIMAX — Steve Cheek was laying on the coach after suffering an injury in a church league basketball game when his mother asked if he knew what he wanted to do with his life.

Cheek was a rising senior at Eastern Randolph High School and it was then, while watching games on television, that he saw exactly what he wanted to do.

Coach.

That’s what he’s been doing since his graduation from UNCG and his latest stop will be a return stop as he was recently named the new girls basketball coach at Providence Grove High school, taking over for Jonathan Gainey, who left after one season. 

Cheek spent four seasons as an assistant boys coach under Wes Luther at PG before spending last year as an assistant at Southern Guilford. This will be his first head coaching position.

“I’m excited, it’s a great opportunity,” said Cheek, a 2013 graduate of Eastern Randolph High School. “I was watching games and that’s when I figured out I wanted to be a coach.”

Cheek spent two years at Randolph Community College and transferred to UNCG, where he needed to earn credits for a class. He called Southeast Guilford and what began as needing just eight hours for that class turned into a three-year stint as an assistant coach.

He was part of a coaching staff that won a state title and he then headed to PG to work under Luther in the boys program. When Luther left for Asheboro High School, Cheek went to Southern Guilford for a season. 

Now he’s back at PG.

“It’s like being home again,” Cheek said. “A couple of people have left since I’ve been here, but I’m excited. I remember when I first walked into Southeast Guilford and Southern Guilford, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is wild.’ I was probably that way at Providence Grove, too. But now this feels like home.”

Cheek takes over a team that was 15-12 last year, including a 7-5 record in the Piedmont Athletic Conference. The team lost a couple of key players in Brooke Ingram and Asia Steverson, but returns a solid nucleus in Jada Nixon, Mailey Way and Laurel Bernhardt.

“We had a meeting earlier (last) week and I told them I expected to compete from Game 1,” Cheek said. “We can make noise and be right there with the best teams in this conference. We have the pieces. We just have to work.”

The Patriots will be led by Nixon, Way and Bernhardt.

“Those girls right there can be the leaders of this team and I expect them to step up,” Cheek said. “They have won, they have been there.”

Cheek, who likes to pressure teams on defense, is the third head coach in the past three seasons.