For coach Matt Hoppe, heart attack alters view of TSSAA boys state basketball
· Yahoo Sports
CLARKSVILLE — Boyd-Buchanan coach Matt Hoppe noticed a change this week.
Visit asg-reflektory.pl for more information.
Not just because the upper-third of his heart isn’t pumping as well as he hopes it will a year from now. Not just because he wears a defibrillator and monitor around his chest everywhere he goes, including during the DII-A TSSAA boys basketball state tournament semifinals.
He is seeing life from a completely different vantage point these days.
Hoppe, a Brentwood Academy graduate who previously coached at BA and Clarksville Academy, suffered a major heart attack in January and returned for the first time to coach Boyd-Buchanan in a 61-57 semifinal loss to BGA on March 6.
“(The state tournament) felt different for me this time,” he said. “I really just tried to enjoy this journey. I know how hard it is to get here. In the past I've been so consumed with doing everything I could to win and not paying attention to how much these guys enjoy it. The past week has been one of the most fun weeks I've ever had coaching basketball.”
Don't get him wrong — Hoppe, who's 49, said the loss stung.
But on Jan. 22, he was on the floor of Boyd-Buchanan’s basketball facility texting his wife for help after an early morning practice. He was suffering a “widow-maker” heart attack, categorized as a 100% blockage in the heart’s largest vessel, the left anterior descending artery. Doctors at the Chattanooga Heart Institute told him he had two additional blockages, one of which was at 80%.
His wife, Laura, contacted Boyd-Buchanan’s head of school and athletic director. Within three minutes, the school’s head nurse, Melissa Smith, provided medical attention that Hoppe is sure saved his life.
He received stents for the blockages during a six-day hospital stay and returned home. He has heart therapy three times a week. One was scheduled for the day of Boyd-Buchanan’s semifinal.
“Skipped today,” Hoppe said, laughing. “But I got plenty out there.”
He said he worried about death in the hospital. But he never lost consciousness and his heart never stopped. He is able to exercise a little more each day and can stop wearing his heart monitor May 1. His wife is a dietitian and watches what he eats closely.
Hoppe graduated from Brentwood Academy in 1995. He went 68-12 in three seasons as BA’s coach, reaching the DII-AA state championship game in 2021, and lost in the 2022 semifinals. He led Clarksville Academy to the DII-A state semifinals in 2023.
BGA coach Trey Meyer said his heart “sunk into (his) desk” when he heard what happened in January.
Hoppe didn’t have to return to coaching at all — ever — and certainly not in 2026. But he was back on the Buccaneers' bench for the region tournament in January in a limited capacity while Boyd-Buchanan assistant Tracey Walker took his place.
Hoppe informed Walker on the bus ride to the state semifinal that he wanted to take the reins again. He was fairly active on the sideline, especially at one point in the fourth quarter when he argued for a goaltending call against BGA.
“I felt like I'd kind of be a hypocrite if I didn't at least try to come back and coach these guys after doing something hard and difficult like I did,” Hoppe said. “For two years I've been telling them to ‘do hard things’ . . . I felt if I was well enough and healthy enough to do it, I had to.”
That resonated with Boyd-Buchanan junior Ian Allen, who scored 14 points in the semis.
“One thing I take from Coach Hoppe is how to handle ‘hard’ better,” Allen said. “We’ve been through a lot this year. Handling ‘hard’ a lot better was way more important for us after he went down. We wanted to keep playing for him.”
Tyler Palmateer covers high school sports for The Tennessean. Have a story idea for Tyler? Reach him at [email protected] and on the X platform, @tpalmateer83.
He also contributes to The Tennessean's high school sports newsletter, The Bootleg. Subscribe to The Bootleg here.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Matt Hoppe coaches TSSAA boys basketball state tournament after heart attack