New Girls’ Basketball Coach Brings Fresh Ideas to the Team

It’s a Sunday afternoon before the girls’ basketball team will play in the fall league. Senior Logan Weckbaugh’s phone rings with a call from Coach Stein. He asks if she’s ready and jokes about how the running during season will be rough. He gets Logan psyched for the game and her mind focused on the upcoming basketball season.

Scott Stein, the new head coach for the girls’ basketball team, has made this type of phone call a routine to some of the returning JV and varsity girls to make sure that they are coming to the game that evening. Although the phone call is primarily for that reason, he takes the time to joke around and talk to each of his players.

These phone calls are just one of the ways that Stein has made an impression on his players. This winter will be Stein’s first season as head coach for the girls’ basketball team but he already has the support of the team.

“I think he’s a really good coach,” Weckbaugh said, “He understands where we are as a team and will push us as far as we can go.”

Stein is a new head coach at East, but the school’s basketball program isn’t new to him. In the 2000-2001 season Stein was the varsity girls’ basketball team’s assistant under Lane Green. He left the program when a head coaching job at Eudora High School became available.

When the opportunity came up this year for a head coaching job at East, Stein was interested even though he knew there was no teaching position available. Stein liked the idea of returning to a school where he had felt welcome several years ago. Now with Stein teaching at Schlagle High School, he will have to make the thirty minute trip to East for practice after school.

Another challenge that Stein will face is coaching a team that graduated seven seniors. Senior Molly Rappold thinks that the team’s lack of varsity experience could help the team.

“We don’t have very much varsity experience,” Rappold said.  “but it will actually be good because there won’t just be two scorers, we’ll all have to step up.”

Weckbaugh is also confident in the team because they play so well as a group. Last year the JV team went 19-0.

“I think we’ll be able to pull it off because this years varsity is basically last years JV so we have a lot of experience playing together,” Weckbaugh said. “I think we’ll just gel better than last year.”

Another change for the team besides losing a majority of the varsity squad is the playing style. Stein plans on altering the offense and defense style a bit to make up for graduating several taller seniors and to utilize his team’s quickness.

“We are going to play an up-tempo offense,” Stein said. “We are going to try to push the ball and take advantage of opportunities before the defense gets set.”

Stein wants to play a fast offense partially because of the team’s size. They don’t have a huge post player, so Stein plans on running an offense that will use their size and speed to their advantage.

“We want to play a five-man motion offense as opposed to a post presence,” Stein said.

As far as defense goes, Stein likes to run an aggressive man-to-man defense. He also plans on trying to draw some of the bigger players away from the bucket.

At team camp in Oklahoma, Stein introduced some of his playing styles in the game. After seeing the girls trying his playing technique, Stein will alter the offense and defense based on what he saw and who he plans on playing in different positions.

Another change that junior Shannon McGinley anticipates is concerning practices. McGinley expects Stein to pay extra attention to the fundamentals of basketball at the beginning of the season—things like shooting and shuffling the defense.

“Even though we all already know how to [shoot], Coach Stein will make sure we know how to do it correctly before learning the plays for the season,” McGinley said. “We want to make all of our basic skills almost perfect before learning other things.”

Overall, Stein and his players hope to translate last years JV team’s success to this year’s varsity team. Stein’s number one goal is to try and win the league. Outside of that he simply wants to do well and improve as the season goes on.

McGinley trusts Stein to help them get the job done.

“He’s a go-getter,” McGinley said, “He’s quick to the point at telling us what we’re going to have to do, so we’ll get a lot accomplished.”