The 2015-16 New Richmond Lady Lions have a new coach, Tom Wessner, back left, patrolling the sidelines this season.

The 2015-16 New Richmond Lady Lions have a new coach, Tom Wessner, back left, patrolling the sidelines this season.
By Chris Chaney
Sports Editor

Coaching changes are rarely easy, but in the tumultuous world of high school sports the coaching carousel is constantly spinning.

For the New Richmond Lady Lions, Brad Hatfield had become a staple on the varsity sidelines, but when he resigned to spend more time with his family last spring, Tom Wessner was tapped to head up the program.

Most recently the boys varsity head coach at Whiteoak High School, Wessner spent the last 13 years in the Bright Local School district where he earned accolades as a social studies teacher as well as a sectional title-winning coach.

“The transition was pretty smooth,” Wessner said. “Whenever you come into a new situation, it’s more about what you know and how you can covey that to the kids. That’s always going to be a bit of a struggle early on, but I think we got over it pretty quickly and the girls have done really well.”

Dropping the first two games of the season by a combined eight points, Wessner and the Lady Lions were able to look at themselves on film, diagnose some problems and go to work fixing them. Since the opening week of the season, New Richmond has gone 8-2 and 3-1 in the Southern Buckeye Conference’s American Division, earning them the second-place position as the back half of the league schedule begins.

“We finally got some stuff on film and we were able to show (the girls) where to go and where some holes were,” the coach said. “We moved some people around and we’ve been much more successful. It’s seemed to have come together a little bit more over the past few weeks.”

Wessner mentioned in his introductory meeting with the team that with an experienced roster returning from a 2014-15 squad that went 15-5, he didn’t want to “reinvent the wheel,” but he did want to implement some of his philosophies. That compromise has taken hold as the Lady Lions entered 2016 and have won their last four games.

Leading the way for New Richmond is senior guard and returning First Team All-SBC performer Maren Hance. Hance is averaging just under 18 points per game and nearly six rebounds. Her backcourt mate, fellow senior Ashley Gray, is the team’s second leading scorer at 6.1 points per game.

Gray and fellow senior Lindsey Williams are looked to as the team’s defensive stoppers.

On the block, Anna Hamilton and Jade Kunz are cleaning up the boards and allowing the team to get easy buckets in transition.

Wessner’s familiarity with the league and it’s similarity to the Southern Hills Athletic Conference — in which Whiteoak plays — has been an asset in understanding the consistency it takes to claim a league title.

At 3-2 following the first round of games in the SBC-American, New Richmond sits two games back of league-leading Goshen and will need some help if the Lady Lions are to earn their second league title in three years.

“Every night if you’re not paying attention, or you didn’t do your scouting, or you don’t convey to the girls the importance of certain things, you’re going to get beat,” Wessner said. “In the second half (of the season), one thing we have to stress to the girls is that everyone has seen us once. The things we did and were successful at, (the opponents) realize we were successful and they’re going to try to stop it. We have to work a little bit harder and do it a little bit better if we want to have the success we had before.”

With the second half of the conference slate on deck next week, Wessner said that his team needs to remain focused on the task at hand. Given Goshen’s cushion and stranglehold on the league, New Richmond can only worry about what they can control and that means trying to win every game remaining on their schedule

From there, Wessner said, the team’s goals are to continue to improve in the postseason.

“Last year, the girls made it to the sectional final, so the goal right now is to get that sectional championship,” he said.

New Richmond will travel to Roger Bacon on Saturday, Jan. 16 for a match up with the Spartans before another road game on Thursday at Batavia kicks off their home stretch.