BUCYRUS–A longtime basketball coach is putting a “spin” on his retirement years.
Dennis Lybarger, 71, is a fixture at the Bucyrus Area YMCA, where he racks up thousands of free-throw shots on the basketball court. He calls it his aerobic workout. And he’s a whiz.
“You don’t use your legs.
You just use your arms. The spin on the ball means a lot,” explained Lybarger, whose daily routine includes keeping a detailed record of all his shots. “You get a heck of a sweat up. You’re constantly moving.”
Lyberger usually shows up at noon when the gym has cleared out from the morning pickleball players.
But he doesn’t just stand at the foul line. Sometimes he kneels or throws from a sitting position on the edge of a chair, first at the line, then at each side of the basket.
“I’m shooting five or six a minute without a rebounder. Once you get five 20’s in, you’ve got 100 shots,” he said. “You gotta’ be self-disciplined to do it like that, and you gotta’ really be focused. I just like to do it. It’s a challenge to see if you can keep it up.”
Lybarger stops after every 20 throws to chart his shots. As of Jan. 6, he said he made 81,079 out of 87,242 free throws in 221 days at the Y, which is an average of 92.9%. One afternoon, he sunk 454 out of 483, he said, for a whopping 93.9-percent completion rate.
Before taking his first shot, Lybarger does one hard-pound dribble. Then he reads the writing on the ball – also part of his routine.
“You shoot off the grooves of a ball.
I’ve shot a couple at the Y where they bounced around and laid on the heel of the rim, so you’re really shooting ’em soft.”
Lybarger, who lives in Shelby now, has been a familiar face in area coaching circles. He was a volunteer girls’ basketball coach for ten years at Bucyrus High School and “kept the numbers” for the girls’ middle school programs at both Holy Trinity and Bucyrus Middle School.
Although he only played hoops in middle school, Lybarger has been a regular at area high school and college games. He can rattle off statistics from winning teams over the years, such as Wynford and St. Peter’s, and keeps scrapbooks of newspaper articles, players, coaches, and scores.
In the early 1990’s he won both the free throw contest and the three-point shooting contest at the recreation center in Norwalk. Prior to that, he had the opportunity to marvel at world champion free throw shooter Ted St. Martin during an appearance in Mansfield.
Lybarger, who retired from the former Food Town in Ashland, hit the courts at Aumiller Park in Bucyrus, too.
The coronavirus pandemic in 2020, he said, prevented him from attending some games but prompted him to try his ball-handling skills indoors.
His swishes and bank shots have caught the attention of other Y members. “Man, you’re just smokin,” one spectator remarked. Branch director Brian Riffle is so impressed that he captured video. “He’s a fascinating gentleman and a wealth of knowledge,” Riffle said. “My perspective is he’s just a true student of the game.”
Lybarger has already worn out two basketballs at the Y – a Spalding and a red and white Wilson. But this senior citizen is a “straight-shooter,” convinced that mastering free throws is the key to the game – and developing lifelong skills.
“Shooting a lot of free throws will make you a tremendous shooter in basketball,” he said. “A lot of kids give up on things. To be really good at it, you have to put in a lot of sweat.
You can’t just go to regular basketball practice and get good at it.”