By: Ramar Jackson
Throughout the past few years, LREI has struggled to keep a consistent varsity basketball coach. Each year the coaches have changed, but there is always the same result. Since 2013-14, the team has won only between 27and 33 percent of its games each season, leaving some wondering how much attention is being put into the basketball team.
Senior Keith Daly has been playing basketball at LREI since seventh grade and has seen a different coach every year so far. Along with many others, Keith found that many of the coaches lacked experience. “Since I’ve been here, we’ve barely won any games,” he said. “In ninth grade, we had two European basketball players who hadn’t coached before, as our coaches. In tenth grade our coach was the head soccer coach.” Both the Varsity and the Junior Varsity basketball teams have seen three different coaches in the past few years. But while in the past couple years there has been no step towards change, there is now a shred of hope with the current Varsity coach, Arjay Perovic.
Athletic director Peter Fisher relayed the difficulty of retaining coaches who work outside the school. “Coaches usually wouldn’t come back because of another job or the fact that they had limited time,” he said. Even so, there was a big impact on the team. The team was often left in a place where it was like starting from scratch. It put them right back in a position to lose.
Junior Daniel Jegede also has had the same experience as Daly. “I feel as though there is no time put into how coaches are chosen,” he says. “Sports, especially basketball, aren’t priorities at LREI, which is why we lose consistently.” Although Jegede has been left with complaints after previous seasons, similar to Daly, he believes “things are going to go well for us this year with Arjay.”
Both Daly and Jegede feel that although there has been a consistent losing streak the past couple years, things have started to turn around with the help of the new varsity head coach, Arjay Perovic. Last year, he led the team through one of the best seasons they’ve had within the last three years.
When asking athletic director Peter Fisher about the process for choosing coaches, he told us that “often times he would ask adults in the school if they wanted to coach,” and if that wasn’t enough, then he would “ask coaches from other leagues like steady buckets.” This is where Perovic heard about the job and was able to come to LREI.
With Perovic as the varsity head coach, the team has improved their winning record by almost 15%. The team has also started off this year right with workouts throughout the summer for varsity players, as well as workouts now.
We reached out to Perovic for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.