New Marquette Senior High School varsity boys head basketball coach Rich Ledy, standing at center among three red-shirted coaches, is part of a huddle during a Marquette girls varsity game played on Feb. 20, 2018, at the MSHS gym. The other coaches are girls head varsity coach Ben Smith, kneeling left, and Redettes’ assistant coach Paul Seibert. Marquette was playing Negaunee. (Photo courtesy Daryl T. Jarvinen)

“It’s a nice challenge for me and it’ll be refreshing to really game plan.” — Rich Ledy, new head coach, Marquette Senior High School varsity boys basketball

———————

MARQUETTE — After 20 years of coaching in the Marquette Senior High School girls basketball program, Rich Ledy has made the move over to the boys program after being introduced as the new varsity head coach on Wednesday afternoon.

Serving as the JV girls basketball coach since 2005, Ledy has been a coaching mainstay on Marquette’s sidelines for years. The former DeTour High School star in several sports and NMU basketball standout also was the MSHS freshmen girls basketball coach from 2002-05 before settling into his JV role.

Excited about the chance for a fresh start with Brad Nelson leaving the position for Negaunee’s job, Ledy felt this was the right opportunity to make the leap.

“I just felt that it was probably now or never,” Ledy said. “I’m 54, and I had been coaching the girls for 20 years now, and it had gotten kind of stale. I was doing the same thing over and over, and coached the same way.

“I just thought that this would be a good opportunity to freshen things up a little bit and try a new challenge. It’ll be interesting to see if my philosophies and strategies work at the varsity boys level.”

Known for his successful JV teams that featured a suffocating full-court press defense, Ledy doesn’t anticipate changing how he wants to coach the game in playing fast with tempo on both ends of the floor. He doesn’t foresee 35-30 scores in his vision of Marquette basketball.

He wasn’t positive at first that he was going to go after the boys’ job, but he felt like it was right after more consideration.

Ledy will enter this MSHS program with a lot of question marks, envisioning this summer will let him get familiar with his players and his players familiar with him. Also, having coached at developmental levels for the girls for 20 years at Marquette, scouting and game planning for opponents will be something that Ledy hasn’t had to do for years.

“There’s definitely going to be a learning curve, no question,” Ledy said. “I’ve seen one varsity boys basketball game in the last three years because we played at the same time. I don’t know any of the kids, I don’t know if the competition plays zone or man (defense), but I think it’s a nice challenge for me and it’ll be refreshing to really game plan and work at something again.

“I always put the time in, but I was always doing the same thing because it was working and I was hesitant to change. Now, I have to change everything because I don’t know what I don’t know and I don’t know what I know.”

There are definite challenges for Ledy as he makes this transition, but none may be bigger than how results-oriented varsity basketball is compared to JV.

He never thought his job was to win games at the JV level, according to Ledy, instead it was getting his players ready to play on the varsity. It was clear with the success of his teams, and the run that Marquette varsity girls basketball had for many years, that he was doing just that.

However, he understands the major difference between the two, and thus will create a different mindset that involves more about winning and less about development.

“That’s one big difference between JV girls, is I never, in all my time there, talked to kids about winning and losing,” Ledy said. “If we won, we won, and if we lost, we lost. This is obviously a different animal where now winning is a priority, and that’s another part of the learning curve.”

Ledy’s first practice as coach will be conducted Tuesday as he tries to get to know his new players. They really are new, because Marquette graduated a lot of players from last year’s team.

“We’re going to have to start from scratch a little bit, which is fine because I’m also starting from scratch, too,” Ledy said. “We’re all in this together, and hopefully it doesn’t take us too long to figure it out.”

Ledy is the vice president and a trust officer at First Bank of Upper Michigan, where he has worked for 31 years. He and his wife Morri live in Marquette and have six children and two grandchildren.

Travis Nelson can be reached by email at tnelson@miningjournal. net.