Josh Castles’ first season as head basketball coach starts Saturday when Rider hosts Wichita Falls High School.
The Rider Chronicle sat down with Castles to discuss his team’s improvement and having a special last season.
Q:How do you feel about your team going into a new season?
A: It’s exciting, we got a lot of athletes and a lot of guys spending a lot of time in the gym. So, obviously our goal is to improve off of last year’s record and do good in the district. We’ve been working hard.
Q: What are your expectations for this season?
A: Make the playoffs somehow, someway, and I think we can do that with the guys we got.
Q: Who are the guys you expect to play a key role?
A: We’ve got Christian Ross as our point guard right now, Gavin Aday, Caiden Reed, Jared Cohee, Silas McKown and we’ve got football guys coming as well.
Q: What new players or younger guys are you excited to see play?
A: There’s two seniors that haven’t played since I coached as freshmen so I’m excited to see them come back out. Then I’ve got three guys coming from football that I’ve coached the last two years (at Archer City) so putting those guys together with the guys we’ve had all year, it’ll be fun to experiment with.
Q: How do you feel about being the head basketball coach for the first time at Rider?
A: Everyone asks why would you come back for one year, when you know your job is over after one year. It’s just the challenge and the opportunity to be with the last group at Rider. It’s just special for me.
Q: What games and tournaments are you looking forward to?
A: I would say all the district games are big. We’re playing Old High Saturday that’s for the final time as well, that’s always special. We’re in the Burk tournament, we’re in the Krum tournament, Bridgeport tournament. So those all will be very competitive.
Q: How do you balance coaching football and basketball at the same time?
A: I don’t sleep. I do a lot of laundry and just enjoy it. I mean I love it. I just stay busy and rest when you can.
Q: What are you doing special for Rider’s last season?
A: You know of course we’ll have the normal stuff, the teacher (appreciation) night. We’ve got them a lot of special gear, and our model is “The Last Ride” so that’s kind of been our model. That’s what we do with our gear and our breakout and things like that. So trying to savor every moment because it really is the last.
