Wright era begins in Hartselle
Keith Wright has been a part of Hartselle’s athletic tradition since his days as a player in the mid-80s when he led the Tigers to a county basketball title as a senior.
Now, he’ll get the opportunity to step up and fill the head coaching spot at his alma mater this season.
Wright, an assistant coach at Hartselle High School for 17 years, was officially hired as the Tigers’ head basketball coach last week, replacing Johnny Berry.
Berry resigned earlier in the summer to take the athletic director’s job at Hartselle.
“Hartselle is the only place that I have ever worked,” Wright said. “Hopefully, it is where I will retire. This is my hometown and I can’t imagine coaching anywhere else.”
“I worked with Johnny for a long time hoping that one day I would get this opportunity to be the head coach at Hartselle,” Wright said. “Now I’m getting that opportunity. That’s what it is, an opportunity. It’s up to me to make the most of it.”
Wright was an assistant coach on the 1990 and 1991 teams that won state championships. He was also an assistant to Berry on the Tigers’ teams that reached the Final Four in 2000 and 2002.
All of the current Hartselle varsity players have been coached by Wright on the junior high and B-team level for the past several years. Wright sees that as a positive as the Tigers make the coaching transition this season.
“The kids know me and they know my expectations,” Wright said. “We’ll bring energy, enthusiasm and intensity to everything we do.”
“Johnny and I are completely different personality-wise. He’s more laid back and I’m really more of an intense person. We’re a lot different in our approach to basketball, including practice and preparation.”
Wright would like to see the Tigers’ basketball tradition return to that 12-year run from 1990-2002 where the Tigers were one of the state’s dominant programs.
That means continuing to build the program from the junior high up to the high school level.
“I want to get the junior high program on the same page as the high school program,” Wright said. “I have coached all of these kids (on the varsity) since the seventh grade. They know what to expect.
“That’s a great benefit of having the junior high under the same umbrella as the varsity program. The kids know what to expect when they get to the high school teams.”
Wright’s players are a little behind schedule after spending much of the summer in limbo as the Tigers’ head coaching situation remained uncertain.
Now many of those players are on the football field every afternoon. Hartselle has 22 varsity and B-team basketball players and 15 of those athletes are playing football this fall. And that’s just fine with Wright.
“We don’t plan on starting the basketball season until the football season is over and that is a change from the past,” Wright said. “We’re looking for special things from our football team from this group of players and I’m really excited about that for those players.
“The same goes for the baseball program. We’re proud of our storied athletic tradition at Hartselle and we want to have that same kind of success on the basketball court.”
