New coach brings wealth of experience to McCrory
Alot of people might consider working 30 years in a profession to be allencompassing, but for first-year McCrory head basketball coach Dwain Roark, such is not the case. After starting his career at the high school level, then spending many years coaching at several colleges — including North Texas State, Northwestern Louisiana and what is now Lyon College — the Louisiana native felt the pull to bring things full circle.
“The thing of it was, I just felt like something was missing,” he said. “I’d been coaching a lot on the college level, and I thought, ‘I’m pretty excited about going back to the high school level.’ I’ve been doing a lot of recruiting service stuff and helping kids get college scholarships and stuff like that, but my career just wasn’t complete if I’m not coaching.
“I was going all the time to games anyway, so I said why not just go ahead and get back in it? The superintendent at McCrory, Scott Waymire, and I coached together in Carlisle a lot of years ago. I’m very familiar with him, and I know he runs a tight ship.”
Having coached in small high schools during his time on the bench, Roark understands the nature of such places where students have the opportunity to play multiple sports. Thus, he admitted that at writing, he hadn’t had the chance to evaluate his players on the court much yet, as most were tied up with the Jaguars football team.
But, he said, well-conditioned athletes in one successful team sport generally lend themselves to others, and he’s optimistic about the players he will inherit.
“I believe anytime you play in a winning atmosphere, that’s going to spill over,” he said. “A lot of our talent right now is on the football field. It’s a good program, and looking at the athletes they have, I think we’re going to have a pretty decent ball club.”
Last year, McCrory posted a 10-12 record and went 6-8 in 2A-6 Conference play. At the district tournament, the Jaguars handled KIPP Delta, 55-43, before ending their season on Valentine’s Day to Palestine-Wheatley, 37-31.
Roark said that while it is too early to tell how the team stacks up against the league, or even to name his starters or players to watch, he promised basketball fans they will see a fast-paced and spirited brand of McCrory basketball.
“We’ll be mostly a defensive-oriented team. We play man defense,” he said. “We run and jump the ball a lot. On offense, we’ll get up and down the floor, and we’ll try to use our defense to generate fast breaks. That’s basically what our M.O. is going to be.”