After the 2021 season ended, Newton High School decided to hire a new boys basketball coach. The school hired former Wichita State basketball player, Demetric Williams for the 2022 season. Williams will be taking the position of head basketball coach and is excited to do so.

Before Williams began his job at NHS, he had a career at Cargill in Wichita. Basketball is a big passion of his, so he couldn’t pass up this opportunity to be a head basketball coach at the high school.

“I have been involved with NHS since the summer of 2022 by being a mentor and helping the student-athletes maximize their full potential on and off the court,” Williams said.

Williams has coached high school basketball before. He coached at South East and AAU basketball over the summer. AAU stands for Amateur Athletic Union, which is also known as a travel or club basketball team where other teams compete. He is really looking forward to helping student-athletes maximize their full potential and do their absolute best. He hopes to accomplish many things at NHS, but in particular, he hopes to change the basketball culture.

“I want to change the culture for Newton boys basketball and make it exciting for the student body and community to be proud of,” Williams said.

Williams knows he will bring many strengths to the high school basketball team, such as having 20 years of experience playing and coaching basketball. He says he chose to be a basketball coach because basketball is his passion and that the game teaches a lot of life lessons, so it also gives him the opportunity to mentor.

“Only time will tell but I hope the student-athletes achieve their goals for the season,” Williams said.

Senior Drew Dillon said the new coach has a lot of good things to bring to the program. He said he already has a different mindset; he has a more global mindset. Dillon has been playing basketball since he was just nine years old. He decided to play basketball because he always did it with his brother, throughout high school, and now he is looking forward to continuing it his senior year with the new coach.

“I like what he’s bringing to the team. I feel like he has a lot of knowledge that he could share with us just because of his experience. Like he’s got a good idea of what a team should be in the relationship and how the relationship between a coach and player should be,” Dillon said.

Dillon thinks Williams has already impacted the mindset of a lot of players on the team. He believes the players are a lot more motivated and much more driven to be successful this year than they have in previous years. He is really looking forward to this season.

“I’m just mostly looking forward to how he kind of shifts. He’s hoping to change the culture of the team and program in basketball as a whole and he was hoping to make some major improvements,” Dillon said.