Northeastern names longtime Indiana assistant its new girls basketball coach

Preston Myers, Northeastern girls basketball coach

Preston Myers, Northeastern girls basketball coach

A longtime Indiana basketball assistant coach is moving to Ohio to become a head coach at Northeastern High School.

Preston Myers, 38, was recently hired to lead the Jets girls basketball program. He spent 20 years as an assistant coach in Indiana, most recently at Wabash (Ind.) Northfield High School.

“I’m excited to get started and build something from the ground up,” he said. “There’s not been a ton of success over there. Hopefully I can make an impact quickly and see some good results.”

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Myers’ wife recently got a job in Ohio and he began searching for a coaching job in the area.

“I wanted to continue my coaching career and started looking around Ohio and Northeastern looked like a good fit,” Myers said. “It’s very similar to the school that I was coaching at here. It just felt like home.”

It will be his first head coaching job after many years in the second seat.

“I’ve been at it 20 years and I felt like I owed it to myself to at least try it from the big seat at least once,” Myer said. “You always think, ‘If this was my program, this is how I would run this.’ It’s nice to be in charge of something.”

He takes over for Tab LaFollette, who went 1-22 in one season with the Jets. With its lone victory last year, Northeastern snapped a 32-game losing streak. The Jets have never won an Ohio Heritage Conference title since joining in 2001.

It’s a great time to start a new program because everyone is starting fresh due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Myers said.

“If you’re a football coach and you’ve been there 20 years, with the way the coronavirus has affected sports and society, you’re changing whole program around anyway,” he said. “Whatever you were expecting is probably not going to happen.”

He hopes to round out his coaching staff and begin team meetings this month.

The focus of the program will be defensive intensity, Myers said.

“I’m a big defensive coach,” he said. “The speed of the game will be dictated by what your players are capable of. There’s no sense in trying to run and jump if you don’t have the athletes to do it. I’m big on effort and intensity. If you play the game the right way, you’re going to have fun and see some results will be seen.”

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