The Wayland school district couldn’t have come up with a better coach than Wes Hudson for the girls’ varsity basketball team.

When I heard the news that Marty Howard was stepping down as Wayland girls’ varsity basketball coach, my reaction was that he was deserting a sinking ship.

The Lady Wildcats suffered through an agonizing and injury-riddled season, their worst in quite a spell and it was Howard’s only losing campaign at 10-12. Even worse, six seniors, nearly all of them starters, will graduate this spring.

I asked junior varsity coach Coralie Ritz Miller if she would be interested in taking over the varsity again and she replied that she enjoys coaching at the JV level too much to make that change.

So, for awhile I thought the program built by the legendary Zack Moushegian, one of the most successful in all of Michigan, was in serious jeopardy.

But with Wes Hudson, the once proud and wildly successful girls’ hoops tradition has a good chance to rebound.

Hudson is best known as a player and as a solid member of the two athletic royalty families (with the Ritz-Merchant clan) in Wayland. His father, Mike, coached Wes for four years, most notably in arguably the two best basketball teams in the school’s history, going 23-0 in Class A. The state finalist team of 1955 was Class C.

Mike, as I have flatly stated earlier, is the best basketball coach Wayland’s ever had.

After he graduated, Wes went on to star for Cornerstone University, helping that school win a national championship and he was named NAIA All-American.

I agree with critics who point out that great players don’t necessarily make great coaches. Ty Cobb was a lousy manager, while many players who didn’t even make it to the Major Leagues were terrific skippers.

But Hudson comes from a family that eats, sleeps, drinks and lives basketball. And two members of that family, Mike and Harry, already have proven themselves to be great coaches.

The third generation Hudson coach got his feet wet as a Cornerstone assistant and he did a terrific jon pinch hitting for his dad in a 15-point victory over state finalist Stevensville Lakeshore.

You might say in Wes’ case, it’s in the genes.

As Howard rides off into the sunset, we must be mindful that he was the first to coach the Lady Wildcats to a regional championship since 1989. His teams also twice earned a share of the O-K Gold Conference championship, no mean feat for a league that often sends teams like Wayland, South Christian and Catholic Central to state-level competition.

Wes Hudson will bring passion, commitment and intelligence to the Lady Wildcats. They may not be particularly successful in his first season, but I believe he will build a program from the bottom up and they will be very competitive in the not too distant future.

Some fans are old enough to remember that Moushegian took over a winless basketball team and within two years guided it to the regional finals in 1977.

I hope I’m not putting too much pressure on Wes Hudson, but I won’t be all that surprised if he does something similar.

PHOTO: Wes Hudson