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Schools

Seniors Cause Culture Change for WD Boys' Basketball

West Deptford head coach Don Clark hopes this year's bunch changed the boys' basketball program's reputation for good.

When Don Clark entered the visiting locker room at Barnegat High School following his team’s loss in the first round of the Group 2 playoffs, he began to speak to his team like he had after the 26 games that preceded the defeat.

He started to talk about the missed opportunities, the breakdowns and the mistakes that could have been avoided. But before he could ever get into his postgame rhythm, the basketball coach stopped.

This speech wasn’t going down that old beaten path. He would not allow it.

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“I started saying something about our shooting, and then I just said to myself, ‘What am I doing?’” Clark said. “There’s nothing I can say about this game that is going to impact these seniors going forward.”

Instead, Clark began to take the team on a journey, reliving its progression.

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He talked about the two-win season the core of Tom Jakubowski, Tim Fair, Tim Krott, Ryan Flaherty and Kyle Redrow endured two seasons earlier.

He spoke of the strides made the following year that were good—the team increased its win total to six games—but hardly worthy of front page news.

Then, he spoke on what the team accomplished this season.

“When you go right down to it, they more than doubled their win total from last year,” Clark said. “In the three years prior, they had six wins, two wins, six wins, so they equaled that. They tripled their conference wins (from two to seven) and had a winning season. This was the most wins since 2000.”

Clark credited this team with taking on his identity and believing that hard-nosed man-to-man defense was the way to win.

“They say a team takes on the identity of who its coach is, and this team did that,” Clark said. “I guess because the guys were around me so long and played as sophomores, it just kind of happened. They were me—a three-sport guy that believed that man-to-man was the way to play. They had some warts, but through it all, they came out on top.”

Clark has never shied away from talking about the basketball team’s disappointing reputation around the school or the town. For an athletic program that features winning traditions in football, soccer, wrestling and baseball, the basketball program had been viewed as the ugly duckling for the last few years.

“These seniors had to deal with everyone saying, ‘Just go out for this or that, don’t play basketball,' ” Clark said. “ ‘The basketball team isn’t any good. Don’t stick it out.’

“But the seniors stuck it out.”

And that’s why Clark wasn’t going to dwell on the season’s final game.

“As a coach, you always dwell on losses, it’s just in our nature,” he said. “I refuse to do that with this game. I refuse to do it for the players and refuse to do it for myself. They deserve better than that for what they have done.

“I’m already past this game. I’m not going to have that game as the legacy they left. The seniors left the first winning season in a long time, and now it’s up to the underclassmen to keep that going.”

Next year’s team will certainly have a new look and feel to it. Justin Hansen and T.J. Harcum should return as the only players that saw consistent playing this year. That doesn’t mean the cupboard is completely bare, though. West Deptford’s JV program won 13 games last season and is littered with kids who Clark describes as "basketball players"—meaning basketball is their main sport.

Time will tell whether the new crop of players can thrive at the varsity level. However, Clark is hopeful that the path paved by this year’s team will be one that changes the programs identity for the foreseeable future.

"I told them they left their mark, and it could be the one team where maybe we never go back to that 2-4 win season and maybe we win 10-plus games every season,” Clark said. “Maybe this was the team that changed things for good.”

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