Charles Simms was a staple of Lewis County’s basketball program for the better part of the last two decades.
Following 17 seasons and 443 games as head coach of the Minutemen, Simms has called it a career. His retirement from coaching and teaching driver’s education became effective at the end of the 2025 calendar year.
Were it up to Simms, he’d have finished out the season instead of stepping away from the sidelines following a 63-48 New Year’s Eve loss to Greenbrier East in the Chris Johnson Christmas Classic at Bridgeport.
Instead, five games into the 2025-26 campaign, the 62-year-old Simms’ coaching career is now a thing of the past.
That’s as a result of Senate Bill 712, which went into effect in the spring of 2025 and brought West Virginia into compliance with an IRS mandate requiring certain employees to be 60 days without employment in the post-retirement stage.
“I decided at the beginning of the year, it was time,” Simms said. “I went down to the retirement board and put in for the 31st [of December]. This spring, the state legislature had come up with a new rule that once you retire, you have to be 60 days separated from the education system. Why? I have no clue. It seems like a ridiculous rule whenever you have a shortage of teachers in the state of West Virginia. But that’s their decision, not mine.”
Simms’ coaching career spans 40 years dating back to when he began as a volunteer assistant football coach at Calhoun County.
He later accepted a position on the basketball staff at Richwood, where Simms is an alumnus.
Nearly four decades later, Simms is the winningest coach in LCHS history. His final win came Tuesday against Keyser, though among 249 victories, Simms doesn’t consider a single one his fondest memory.
“Watching kids grow and seeing what they do after they leave this school and the sport is what it’s about,,” he said.
“Becoming good fathers and becoming professionals, whether it’s doctors, lawyers, oil tenders or well tenders, all that stuff and knowing that maybe you’re just a little part of that.”
During his lengthy Minutemen tenure, Simms coached perhaps the most accomplished player in school history in John Riley. Riley earned Class AAA second-team all-state honors as a junior and followed it up with a first-team selection as a senior in 2014 when LCHS competed in the state’s largest classification. Also earning Class AAA first-team all-state honors in 2014 were Jon Elmore, CJ Burks, Rondale Watson, Jimmy Galusky, Brandon Knapper and Trevon Wesco.
“John Riley will always be special. He came to work every day and practiced harder than he played, and that showed whenever he got on the court,” Simms said.
Lewis County’s Charles Simms was honored prior to his final game as Minutemen head coach against Greenbrier East on New Year’s Eve. #wvprepbb pic.twitter.com/yfGWQIbc1O
— Greg Carey (@gcarey938) January 4, 2026
In 2019, the Minutemen secured one of the more memorable victories of Simms’ tenure when guard Shawn Moran sank a three-pointer at the buzzer to lift Lewis past rival Buckhannon-Upshur, 48-47.
Despite entering the postseason with a losing record that year, LCHS won at Bridgeport in the postseason to secure the only state tournament berth of Simms’ tenure and the program’s first since 1985.
The Minutemen bowed out against a Jalen Bridges-led Fairmont Senior squad in a Class AA quarterfinal.
“Walking into the Civic Center as a head coach for the first time will forever be a memory. To me, that’s a Holy Grail for high school basketball in the state of West Virginia. Watching my players and seeing their eyes and how they reacted to it, it’s just magic down there.”
Nathan West, an alumnus of Magnolia who served as an assistant under Simms, is now Lewis’ head coach. West helped guide the Minutemen to a victory against Hampshire in his debut Friday.
Simms, whose wife Michelle is an art teacher at LCHS, doesn’t plan to be around the program on a consistent basis moving forward.
“I don’t want to deflect from the coaches,” he said. “Like I told them, they probably won’t see me at home. If they see me, it’ll be on the road.
“You could have 10 or 12 people coming around you, asking what would you do? I don’t want that. If I come to a game, I want to be able to sit down and be a fan — not a coach. Coaching will always be there for me. I’ll always be coaching a game in my head. I don’t think there’s any coach out there that is not coaching a game in his head somewhere along the way, but it’s time to be able to enjoy things and whenever my wife retires, we’re hopefully headed to the Tampa, Florida area.”
Michelle plans to retire in June, though she has no desire to give up her passion for art.
“She’s devoted all these years to me coaching and I told her I’d devote back to her art,” Simms said. “I’m going to try to pick up the business side of it.”