Billy Miley will succeed Ben Drake as the Jamestown High School boys basketball coach. Submitted photo

Billy Miley has played and coached basketball with among the most accomplished in Jamestown High School history.

Now, the 1999 graduate will get to call the shots himself.

Miley has been appointed the new boys head basketball coach, succeeding Ben Drake, who stepped down at the end of the 2022-23 season. The announcement was made Wednesday at the Jamestown Public Schools Board of Education meeting.

“I am extremely excited and humbled to be appointed the next coach of JHS basketball,” Miley said in a prepared statement. “It has been a thrill and a pleasure working alongside Coach Drake and the other coaches the last 20 years and having a front-row seat to much of the program’s success. We certainly have a rich basketball tradition here at JHS and I am looking forward to the challenge of continuing it in the coming years.”

Miley has spent two decades helping JHS to become one of the premier basketball programs in New York state, serving as junior varsity coach for the last 19 years after spending one year as the freshman boys basketball coach. An eighth-grade math teacher at Jefferson Middle School, he holds a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Fredonia and a Master’s degree from the University at Buffalo. He resides in Jamestown with his wife, Katie, and his children, Max, Kenzie and Andi.

“I am thrilled to have Billy take over the program,” said Drake, the JHS athletic director, who served as the head coach for 25 years before stepping down less than two months ago. “I have been very fortunate to have had Billy as my junior varsity coach for the past 20 years. He has been a very loyal, dedicated and hard-working coach. Not only has Billy been the junior varsity coach, but he’s also served as assistant coach for the varsity games all those years as well. He is a great teacher of the game and he has passion for Jamestown basketball. I don’t believe we could find a better person to be the next head coach. He’ll be great.”

Similar adjectives to “great” apply to the boys program.

Drake’s tenure — from 1998 to 2023 — included: a 425-131 record (.764); 17 Erie County Interscholastic Conference Division 1 championships, seven sectional titles and three Far West Regional crowns; and three trips to the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Final Four in Glens Falls, reaching the championship game twice.

In addition to Drake, past JHS boys head coaches have included Denton Moon (1928-37); Roland Taft (1937-1957); Walter Colburn (1957-59); Vince Joy (1959-1963); John “Dutch” Leonard (1963-1977); Paul Thornton (1977-1978); Joe Piscopo (1978-1980); Felix Muzza (1982-83); Vere Lindquist (1980-1982, 1983-1992); Bill Hager (1992-1993); and Ron Frederes (1993-1998).