Local multi sport coach Kyle Tave is tne new Nashua North boys basketball coach. (Facebook photo)

NASHUA – Kyle Tave’s son Silas, now in the sixth grade, was a huge fan of former longtime Nashua High School boys basketball coach Steve Lane and his summer basketball camp.

“The last three years of Lane’s camp he loved it,” Tave said. “So when Steve retired, I asked him if he’d still have his camp, and he said no. I said, ‘Oh no, what am I going to tell my son? Any move he makes, I’d say, where’d you learn that? And he’d say “North camp.'”

Well now Tave can tell him it’s Camp Tave. The local coach who was once Brad Kreick’s right hand man during the first half of the recent Bishop Guertin girls basketball dynasty, and has been the long-time North defensive coordinator as well as a local middle school girls hoop and softball coach now wears a new title: the new Nashua North boys head basketball coach.

There were a couple of things that led to Tave going for the job. One, after talking with his family, they all agreed it was better for him to keep busy than not. Second, he embraced the idea of stepping into the highly successful shoes of the popular Lane rather than be fearful of it. “You either embrace it, or you stay away from it,” Tave said. And third, if he was going to do the former, at age 49 this was the time. “I’m not getting any younger,” he said. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity where you get to take over a program that has had, a guy like Lane – listen, no one can be a Steve Lane. I said, I have enough confidence now, I’ve been through it. And I told the kids this today when I met with them. It was the last week we were getting ready for 7 on 7. … Why not jump at it now? My son being a sports guy, and he can come to the games and we can make a family thing out of it.”

Tave said he also missed the tournament success and bright lights that shined over the Guertin girls. “The ability to compete at a high level and go out there and, you know, coach basketball,” he said.

All of that energy is what Nashua Athletic Director Lisa Gingras wanted in the next coach, and she knew that comes with Tave, who, as he mentioned, met with the players on Thursday.

“He is very enthusiastic,” Gingras said. “He is committed and dedicated to not only making the basketball program a good product on the court, but he is much more interested in making the students better young men.”

Tave left the Cardinals a few years ago to spend more time with his family and have more easygoing middle school girls hoop job at Elm Street and then McCarthy. He also coaches softball at that level in the spring. But a lot of his coaching brethren at North were urging him to apply for the hoop job. And he was surprised yesterday at his first players’ meeting, because there was a lot of familiarity in the room.

“To be honest, when they came in today (for the meeting), I was like ‘Holy Cow’,” Tave said. “Probably 75-80 percent of the kids I shook hands with I either had in school (at Elm Street/McCarthy) or I’ve coached them in football.”

And he told the kids at the meeting that he’s still going to coach football under head man Chad Zibolis. “I told the kids I was born a football player (in New York),” Tave said. “But I was a three sport guy and was very passionate about basketball. I just wasn’t very good at basketball. I overachieved. I love the game. I’d be a three season (varsity) guy if I wasn’t married with kids.”

The thing now is Tave is not just a coach, but the face of a program. North basketball is his program now, and he’s ready to build it. The Titans, a year after making the Division I finals – and being about 14 minutes away from a title – had it tough this past winter, going 5-13.

“It comes down to communication and relationships,” Tave said. “There was a coach’s clinic I was at for another sport (softball). It had Harold Sachs (of Salem) and one thing Harold Sachs was really good at was communicating with his kids. One thing he said it was all about the relationship with the kids throughout the program, getting the kids to understand what the expectations are.

“What I hope to do is dive down at the young levels. … You’re talking all of Nashua.”

Fellow football assistant Tony Santorsa will be Tave’s JV coach and key assistant, and he plans on having former BG boys head coach Bob Boissoneault, who coached with him at McCarthy, involved if he so desires. “I’ll have my support system,” Tave said. “It’s a unified front.”

He’s made his summer league plans, and probably will delegate camp duties, etc., as he promised his family he’d be around this summer when not working with the North football and hoop players in the weight room and open gyms, etc.

Tave knows exactly what he’s getting into.

“As appealing as the Nashua North job sounds, when you’re saying do you want to take over for Steve Lane, it’s ‘Seriously? I’m going to follow in his footsteps?,” Tave said. “But I’m going to be me, that’s not going to change. But the culture that he’s built here hopefully I can continue and make him proud.”