Cincinnati Nation Day coach Greg Ross recovering from time in ICU

INDIAN HILL – The Cincinnati Country Day boys’ basketball team has played without their head coach for the past week and could do without him for the foreseeable future.

Greg Ross, CCD’s chief basketball coach and assistant sports director since 2014, was hospitalized with a kidney problem.

On Monday he thought he had a kidney stone, but doctors found a mass on the kidney. Later in the week, he had surgery at Mercy Health – Anderson Hospital and Ross was in intensive care until Sunday afternoon.

“On Friday they removed the kidney and the mass,” said CCD headmistress for football and softball, Theresa Hirschauer. “As always, Greg approaches him with a positive attitude around his wife Michelle and two daughters.”

Hirschauer heads the CCD Middle School and is also the former sports director who hired Ross for the basketball job and had him fill in twice as an interim soccer coach. Current Sporting Director Dennis Coyle now leads the Nighthawks football program.

Tony Waite, Ross’s top assistant, will lead CCD’s basketball efforts. Under Ross, the boys lead the Miami Valley Conference-Gray Division with a 15-3 overall record and a 6-0 league mark. Ross was the league coach of the year in 2020 and previously in 2015. In his two soccer seasons as head coach, he was 5-5 (2016) and 6-0 (shortened 2018).

Hirschauer has been posting updates on Twitter since before the operation on Friday. She asked for prayers and said, “He is an amazing man. Nobody has a bigger heart and a bigger love for the Diet.”

On Saturday, she mentioned that Ross could play FaceTime with his wife. On Sunday there were more signs of improvement, when Coyle was finally able to determine that Ross had been moved from intensive care.

At the weekend, a sixth grade CCD boys’ basketball team used “Coach Ross” to crowd before the game. His own team has a home game against Lockland on Tuesday evening before ending the regular season with games against the Miami Valley Christian Academy and St. Bernard-Elmwood Place next weekend.

CCD was number 4 in Division III in Sunday’s draw and will play against Purcell Marian and Riverview East winners in the Princeton section on Wednesday, February 24th.

Somewhere Ross will be watching.