What color uniforms should we wear in our first game?

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Coach Derek Moves On

Earlier this month, Coach Derek accepted a job to be an assistant coach at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. Derek served as the head jv coach and assistant varsity coach at South for the last two years, but his role was much larger than that.
Coach Derek spent countless hours developing players, working travel tournaments, coaching off-season games, and traveling across the state for team camps. There were also many times Coach Derek would travel 40 minutes on a weeknight just to scout a game. These are things that basketball coaches do however, Derek took much more pride because he loved South so much.

Coach Derek played for South and graduated in 2003. He would always say how much he loved South and how much the school gave back to him. One of the things Derek would say to the players was to play hard because that's how its done at South. From the players perspective, they knew how much he cared especially because he wore his heart on his sleeve when it came to basketball. As emotional or into the game Derek got, the players always knew it was because he cared. Some of them would even find themselves saying his catch phrases like "SEE YA," "OC" and "I LOVE IT."

There are a lot of things South is going to miss about Derek, but the thing I will miss most is our basketball talks. It's hard to find another person that can talk strategy and plays for hours. Derek was that person. We ofter would talk after practices and games trying to figure out how to make the team better. Even after a win, we talk about things that we could have been better.

Even though we will miss Derek greatly, we know that he is moving on to better things. He is a young, passionate and gifted coach that will make a career out of this game we all love. On behalf of all of South, we would like to wish Derek the best in all of his endeavors.


No comments:

Post a Comment