Bianco Named State Girls’ Basketball Coach of the Year

Carbon School District Press Release

Carbon High School girls’ basketball coach Ted Bianco was sitting in a faculty meeting earlier this spring when Assistant Principal Jarad Hardy said that it was time for a celebration because a coach at the school had been named Utah Coach of the Year.

“When I heard that, I thought it must be the girls’ swimming coach since they have won three state championships in a row,” he said. “Then, I heard my name. I thought ‘What is this?’ I had no idea. I went to his office the next morning and he actually gave me the certificate.”

He had no inkling that the Utah High School Activities Association (UHSAA) had submitted his name as the nominee from the state for National Coach of the Year, consequently making him the state coach of the year. The letter naming him as such had come to the administration, not him.

As fate would have it, the honor came in his last year as a coach and a teacher at Carbon High School, since he is retiring from public education this spring.

“I found out that the nominations come from committees inside the UHSAA and that no one else is involved,” he stated. “They don’t even tell the person who is chosen for some time.”

His tenure at Carbon as a coach and a teacher dates back to the mid-1990s when he came to the school after being an assistant coach and a math instructor at the College of Eastern Utah (CEU). But, his roots in the community are deep, much deeper than just teaching at the high school.

Bianco grew up in Price after being moved to the area from Colorado. He attended public schools, including Carbon High, and then went on to get his higher education at CEU and at Southern Utah University (SUU). But, that’s the short version of how he went on to be a successful coach, despite the fact that he never actually played basketball at the high school level himself.

“Who would want this body to do that?” he laughed as he said that.

His start in athletics came in high school when he was the manager for the football team.

“I had a coach who asked me to be part of it and it was so much fun,” he said. “That was the first time in my life when I actually got to experience what it was like to be part of a team. Someone had actually taken me under their wing and let me be a part of something. In my mind, that is the best thing that ever happened to me. I could have gone down an entirely different road if that hadn’t happened.”

The head football coach at the time was also the head basketball coach and he asked Bianco to stay on and be the manager for that team as well. Thus, his basketball career had begun.

“They taught me so much about the game and there were even times they threw me into drills on the floor with the players,” he said as he smiled. “Obviously, that didn’t go well for me.”

Out of that, however, he got a college scholarship to CEU. He became their equipment manager for football. While at CEU, he worked with Curt Jensen, who was then the basketball coach at the school, who he said “gave me a lot of responsibility.”

In 1987, Jensen decided not to coach anymore and the new coach, Ronnie Stubbs, asked Bianco to stay on for a year as an assistant coach. The next year, he got a scholarship to SUU, both in academics, and to be an assistant there where he worked for head basketball coach Neil Roberts.

In the fall of 1990, he still had some classes to finish at SUU, but he did come back to assist Stubbs. In the spring of 1991, he student taught at Helper Junior High. Upon graduating, he was hired to help with the women’s team at CEU as an assistant to Dave Paur.

“I spent five years working for Dave,” said Bianco. “Then, I was hired at Carbon High in 1996 to teach math.”

He did no coaching that year, but the next year, he went back and helped Paur part time and was also the girls’ basketball coach at Mont Harmon Junior High.

From 1998 to 2000, he helped coach the girls’ team at Carbon and then he became the boys’ head basketball coach and served in that job for 11 years. In 2011, he was chosen not only to be athletic director for Carbon, but also moved over to the girls’ side of the program, which is what he did through this year. All that time, he taught math at the school, instructing students in classes that ranged from Algebra I to AP Calculus.

“It’s been quite the journey for sure,” he said.

Along with the award he just received, Bianco has been region coach of the year three times and he was named the state athletic director associations’ director of the year in 2018.

When asked about a favorite team he coached, he was hesitant because he said they were all great and a lot of fun to work with, but he did say he had a couple he felt special about.

“When I was the boys’ coach, the 2002-03 team were a bunch of over-achievers,” he said. “They played so hard and worked so hard. We had Tyson Hackwell, Neil Maynes, Joe Moynier (now the basketball coach at Union High School) and Jamal Lewis. We weren’t big, but we were very athletic. We beat Wasatch High on our home court and they went on to win the state championship that year. We also beat Emery for the first time in a long time too. The team didn’t have a winning season that year (9-13), but you never would have known that the way they played. They were a close knit group and I was so proud of them.”

As girls’ coach, he said there were so many teams that it was hard to find one that stood out because there were so many good things that were accomplished.

“I guess the biggest win of my career came when we beat Juan Diego on their floor in 2013-14,” he explained. “They were a strong state tournament team that year and we were young, but we won by two points.”

In fact, he said some of the best wins his teams had were against that Draper Catholic school. This is ironic since next year he is going to keep working because he has taken the position of Athletic Director for the Soaring Eagles.

But, in typical Bianco fashion, the honors he got for anything he did over his career he says also belongs to others, particularly the student athletes he worked with over the years.

“A lot of getting this kind of award is the kind of kids you work with, and I have had a lot of good kids over the years. It’s not all about me, but about them and the other coaches that have been part of it. This award was the highlight of my career. I have to say that I have been very fortunate,” he concluded.