Once this season concludes, he's walking away from high school basketball along with his daughter, Shareé Boyd, Hopewell's leading scorer who is a senior on her father's team.
Richmond says he wants to be able to go watch Boyd play in college next year, and coaching a high school team would make that difficult.
Boyd is currently undecided on college, but is being recruited by teams from the Southern Conference, the Big South Conference and the South Atlantic Conference. She plans to take her official visits once Hopewell's season ends.
Through Tuesday's 46-33 win over Mooresville in the I-Meck Conference tournament, Richmond's Hopewell teams have gone 91-41 in five years. They have won three I-Meck regular season titles in a row — the last two outright — and made the program's first appearance in regionals last year.
"I've done just about everything I can do," says Richmond. "I'm content with the career I've had. I won everything but a state title, and I lost that by three points. I don't stay up at night thinking 'I have to do this until I win a state title,' because most coaches don't get there."
Richmond spent the previous 10 years at Vance, and the first nine of those as the first head coach of the Cougars' girls' basketball team. It was Richmond's Vance team of 2002-03 that went 28-3 and reached the 4A state final. The Cougars, however, struggled shooting that day, converting 29.5 percent of their shots, and ran into a Fayetteville Seventy-First team led by current pro LaToya Pringle, who set a state tournament record in the final with 28 rebounds. Vance lost 50-47.
In 14 years as a varsity head coach at Vance and Hopewell, Richmond has led teams to a 240-115 record, entering Thursday's I-Meck semifinals against North Meck.
He has spent 26 years in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, with his first job being at Independence. He has coached something every year but one, his first at Providence, and that was because he was hired just before a school year began and when the coaching roster was set.
Richmond was the third coach in Hopewell history, replacing Greg Gavins in the spring of 2007. He said he had to change the mindset of those in the program, but got a boost from a freshman class that included 2011 graduates Hannah Early, Hunter Meakin, Addison Wolfkill and Karoline Summerville, who ended up being instrumental in taking the program to its highest point, the 2011 regionals.
"They came in and they bought in right away," says Richmond.
Richmond says he may not be completely finished coaching, but says coaching has changed a lot during his career, including the time commitment required.
"As I've gotten older," he says, "the demands have gotten greater to be as successful as our teams have been. ... It's about become a year-round job."
Richmond will continue teaching psychology and history at Hopewell.
