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Forrest hires Wild to lead Lady Rockets

Posted on Tuesday, April 16, 2024 at 8:20 pm

Post Photo by Chris Siers John Wild has been named the head coach for the Forrest Lady Rockets.

By CHRIS SIERS
csiers@bedfordcountypost.com
For John Wild, the lure of coming home to Forrest has always been a hope of his, but the timing just could never work itself out.
That all changed this spring as Wild has been hired to lead the Forrest Lady Rocket basketball program.
“I’m excited about it. I’ve lived here for 15 years and my kids went to school here. My grandkids will go to school here and my wife was born and raised here.
There has always been a part of me that has thought from time-to-time it would be neat to coach here. This time, when it came open, the timing was just right,” he said.
While he’s spent the past year at Santa Fe and coached throughout the mid-state, Chapel Hill has been home for Wild for a long time and the chance to coach in his hometown was a perfect way to cap his coaching career.
“I’ve formed a lot of close relationships with people in this community over the last 15 years and made some really good friends. I’m just excited about it. It’s a good way for me to finish my career in what I call my hometown,” he said.
While coaches always have certain staples they put within their programs, Wild is a firm believer of molding his team’s identity around the talent on the court.
“The way you play is predicated on your players, and that’s going to change from year-to-year. My Philosophy would be, offensively, we’re going to be able to pass and catch the ball very well and try to limit our turnovers and be fundamentally solid. Defensively, we’ve always primarily played man-to-man and try to eliminate penetration. To finish that off, I think the most important thing is rebounding. Defensively, trying to win the rebounding battle to limit second shots,” he said.
After a rough 2023-2024 campaign, Wild is tasked with rebuilding the winning Lady Rocket culture and among the first steps in doing that is laying the foundation for the program.
“I think the first thing we have to do, before we even get on the floor, we have to talk about all the intangible things we have to do right. We’ve got to be accountable, we’ve got to develop a work ethic, we’ve got to be great teammates—all those little things. We have to do the little things right to try and develop our core before we can worry about what we’re going to do on the floor,” he said.
“Building that culture on how hard we practice, how we care about each other and what kind of teammates we are, all those things have to be done first before we can think about trying to win basketball games. Because I think if we lay that foundation on good, solid culture, I think the winning will somewhat take care of itself.”
Having been named the Lady Rocket coach in the spring means Wild gets a full summer with the team and he plans to hit the ground running to prepare for his first season at the helm with Forrest.
“We’ll start with some open gyms and then we’ll go to tryouts and pick our team. Then we’ll go to summer practices, summer camps and all that’s on a calendar so far. That’s kind of how we’ll flow this summer. July, some of these kids play travel ball, but the ones that don’t, we’ll get in the gym and get some shots up. When school starts, we’ll start our fall conditioning, weightlifting, open gyms, three-man work and go from there,” he said.