Chris Ellis has coached at many stops in his Hall of Fame career but has tried to keep it simple.

Ellis was hired as the North Callaway girls basketball head coach after spending three years as an assistant at Fatima. He has run some practices with the Ladybirds, including last week at the team’s three-day camp at the high school.

Ellis has more than 650 wins and entries into multiple halls of fame in his career while coaching women’s basketball at the professional (Women’s Basketball Association), college and high school level. He was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012, the Maryville University Hall of Fame in 2018 and will go into the Parkway South Hall of Fame this year. Ellis said he is “a Missouri aficionado" who knows about many schools and their basketball histories, but he did have some personal connection to North Callaway.

“I knew the superintendent (Dr. Kenya Thompson) because she is the wife of my athletic director at Fatima,” Ellis said. “There was a head coaching job, and I knew in the past that North Callaway has been successful.”

Ellis added that high school principal Travis Blevins was a football coach at Parkway South, where Ellis coached two state quarterfinal teams and went 185-58. He’s also had some Elite Eight teams at Webster Groves, Whitfield and Fatima and a couple as an assistant boys coach at Parkway West. Whitfield advanced to the quarterfinals in 2023 with five players, including one added midseason after the Warriors’ season had to be put on hold with four players.

Now that has been around his new girls, Ellis said he has liked the Ladybirds’ work ethic and willingness to learn. 

“I think they’re ready to be coached in a way that will make them competitive,” Ellis said. “They want to be pushed, and that’s why I was hired.”

Ellis said “there is no substitute for talent” when he was asked about his previous success, calling it the “most important strategy.” He said he has evolved in his coaching over four decades, saying he has had a “more cognitive approach” and has been  “less aggressive as far as language.”

“The thing that I’m proudest about is the kid that played for me in the 1980’s can still step on here and play for me today because the system has been successful,” Ellis said. “Even when I was coaching my kids’ teams at a young level, we begin with fundamentals. It starts with your footwork, and everything is a derivative of that. If you don’t have footwork, you don’t have a foundation.”

Ellis said his teams spend “15-20 minutes a day on raw fundamentals” before spending time on other skills. He said part of his core beliefs is “if you’re going to do it, you got to do it right,” meaning “we’re going to do it right or we’re going to do it over.”

While there have been many winning teams in his career, Ellis said the North Callaway girls will figure it out and want to be challenged in a “kind yet firm” way.

“I want them to enjoy playing and learn the game,” Ellis said. “Good kids really want discipline, direction and want to be challenged, and I’m seeing that in a lot of these kids.”