An interesting football coaching experiment at Byron Center High School a little more than a decade ago produced neither good nor bad results. But it was interesting.
And coaches for Wayland High School’s varsity girls basketball team are essentially doing the same thing these days, though the development is not as deliberate.
Wayland High School football coach Gerry Diorio, Byron Center coach Casper Giarmo and Caledonia’s Tom Burrill all lived in the same neighborhood, and they decided to pool their resources as assistant coaches and let someone else be designated as the head coach.
So Diorio guided the offensive and defensive lines, Burrill became offensive coordinator and Giarmo took over the defense. All of this was done at Byron Center, which enjoyed pretty good seasons, but it wasn’t anything special.
The thinking was that too many coaches get bogged down in the public relations aspects of what they do and don’t have enough time to teach the game to their players. So the “head coach” would take all the headaches from the press and parents while this threesome would concentrate on what they do best.
The results were inconclusive and only a couple of years later Diorio was back prowling the sidelines at Wayland.
Fast forward to the current situation for Wayland girls’ basketball.
The head coach for the Wildcats, who currently are 9-2 overall, is Wayland High School grad Wes Hudson for the past eight years. His assistants are his dad, Mike Hudson, who was head boys’ varsity hoops coach for the Wildcats for a couple dozen years, and Lance Laker, a Wayland High School graduate who guided Middleville Thornapple Kellogg boys, but most recently is the proud papa of the Laker girls, Liberty and Harmony.
What we have here is three very experienced basketball coaches running the show for the Wayland girls, just as Byron Center had on the gridiron a little more than a decade ago.
You can throw in Ternor Hudson as freshman coach, and you can see the connections.
I’m not sure about the significance of this situation, but I can’t help but imagine the Lady Wildcats are getting about as high quality hoops guidance as you can get at the prep level.
Or do too many cooks spoil the broth?
