Revere High School (RHS) hired a new head to fill the vacant position coach for the women’s basketball team before the start of the new season.
Dorian Rowell is an Ohio native and has been coaching and training women’s basketball players for nearly 20 years.
When the RHS women’s basketball team needed a new head coach, Rowell filled the role. Rowell has coached collegiate women’s basketball as well as AAU (club) girl’s basketball and has been leading a skills training program.
“I started coaching and training a long time ago. Just being in the gym and seeing people that needed help, I would ask them if I could help them do something better or in a different way… Scholastically, I have coached at Lake Ridge Academy, North Royalton, Cloverl eaf, Hathaway Brown School, West Geauga, and now at Revere,” Rowell said.
This year, Rowell is looking forward to his players having a fun season. He wants to create an environment where his players can have fun and the community can be included.
“I’m hoping that I can bring excitement back to Revere girl’s basketball. We as a staff and team would like the entire community at our home games and travel with us to our road games,” Rowell said.
Rowell values hard work and setting a good example. He hopes his ideology will provide a framework for a constantly improving basketball team. He wants his players to think in this way and ask themselves questions about how to make the team better as a whole and how they can lead by example.
“Am I setting a good example for how I want my teammate to be? Are my actions helping the team become incrementally better? Am I giving my best effort as a student athlete?” Rowell said.
Job candidates often have to go through three or more separate interviews to narrow down the competition. According to RHS Principal Doug Faris, there were four candidates for the job and they had to go through a series of rounds to be selected as the new head coach.
“The first round is typically questions that are more general in nature. What’s your philosophy of coaching? What would you do in this type of situation? The second round gets more in depth, so we want to see practice plans. We’ll give more specific scenarios like if you’re coaching in a game and this happens what do you do? So it asks the candidates to be a lot more specific in that second round. The third and final round is usually just a conversation with the superintendent,” Faris said.
Rowell impressed with more than just his coaching experience. Faris recounted his interview with him.
“Dorian did a nice job. He had a lot of energy. He was an AAU coach that was recommended to us and he’s a black and white guy. He’s a ‘Hey this is how it is’ guy and I really appreciated that about him and I’m excited to see what he can do,” Faris said.
Revere’s Athletic Director (AD), Don Seeker, was also very involved in the hiring process. He sets up all interviews with new coach candidates and is responsible for finding candidates.
“I have to post (the job availability) internally and then post it on a website called High School Athletic Director’s Network which basically kicks it to everyone in the state. I try to reach out to other ADs, coaches, parents and people often have suggestions for you. We interview our candidates and make recommendations,” Seeker said.
Although Seeker puts lots of effort into finding new coaches, the search is often difficult as he said that many coaches will simply turn down offers, and some coaches are not as qualified as Seeker would like. Seeker also said that he prefers that RHS coaches work in the high school.
“It’s getting harder and harder, in a perfect world, if all of my coaches were in the building that’d be great. I think that gives a great opportunity. You get to see the coach everyday and I think you get to know them on more of a personal basis, but again, that’s few and far between. There’s not a coaching tree in the backyard that you could just pull a coach from,” Seeker said.
Rowell might not get to be in the building as much as Seeker would like, but Rowell has impressed Seeker with what he’s shown so far.
“I went to the first four open gyms (practices before tryouts with free play). I went and spent four days just watching them, and I was very impressed. It was organized and I know he has some preseason events planned for the girls this year. I’m looking forward to it.”
