Hidden Valley High School has brought in a new girls’ basketball coach, Samantha Webster, for the 2023-2024 school year in hopes of improving the team.
Webster is bringing her expertise that comes from playing the sport at the collegiate level at Concord University. Furthermore, she has been coaching since she was in graduate school. Before she came to Hidden Valley, she was at William Bird High school as the assistant coach for the girls’ varsity team for a year and the JV head coach for 6 years. According to Webster, she wants to, “pour into other people,” and, “give back to the game that gave me so much.”
Her goal is for the team to “get better every day and see improvement.” She believes the team’s efforts might not show right away, but she says, “as long as we [the team] continue to get better every day those things are going to come.”
Coach Websters coaching style is relationship focused. Laylo Furkatova (11), a player on Coach Websters team, says that Webster “makes sure we are all in a good mindset and thinks about our emotions.” Webster says, “Kids don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.” With this mantra, she takes time to focus on each player individually as well as part of the team. Furkatova says, “After practice or a game she will call me into her room and ask if everything is good and how I felt about the last game.”
Her plan to improve the team begins with setting the expectation that her players both “play hard and are good teammates.” She hopes to build a cohesive, mentally tough team. The Hidden Valley girls basketball team is set for a positive year under Coach Webster’s leadership!
