On Thursday afternoon Greeneville High School announced that Zak Holt had been named the head coach of the girls basketball program, a post that had been vacant since March when Annette Wats stepped down.
Holt had been an assistant under Watts for the past four years. Before that he coached both the boys and girls programs at Nolachuckey and South Greene Middle. He is now excited to leave his mark on the Lady Greene Devils program.
“I feel extremely blessed and grateful to have this opportunity,” Holt said. “I have learned a lot working on coach Watts and I love coaching this group. It feels really great to get this chance to put my stamp on the program and continue to share the game that I love.”
Holt had been leading the program on an interim basis since the season ended in a state sectional loss to Cocke County. He did not know if he was going to be promoted, but he has been at work with the returning players over the past few months. In that time Holt has instilled the motto of “No deposits, no returns”, and every day the Lady Devils have been working toward what they hope are returns in the form of wins in the winter.
“Even when we’ve been in this interim period I told the girls that I was coming in every day to work as long as they were coming in to work,” Holt said. “Every day I wrote on the white ‘No deposits, no returns’. We are working every day to get better and looking for those returns. Now that I’m the head coach I’ve told them that the standard is still standard. We are still going to come in every day and work hard and we will still expect to win.”
Holt is hopeful that his familiarity with the team will make the transition an easy one as summer practices got underway at the start of June. He knows that the Lady Devils have some big time players he can count on like Maria Lyde and Julia Woolsey, and they know he is committed the program’s success.
“I think it is really big for these girls we have returning that they know me and I know them,” Holt said. “I know what they can they do, and they know what to expect from me. Of course the assistant-coach relationship and head-coach relationship are different. But I think the big thing is they know this isn’t just a stop for me before I find the next job. They know I’m going to be here.”
After learning under Watts the past four seasons Holt expects the product on the floor to look similar to what Lady Greene Devil fans have grown used to, but they may recognize a few new elements when roundball season rolls around in November.
“Coach Watts’ reputation speaks for itself and she had a lot of success playing in your face defense for the length of the floor. We will still do a lot of the same things that we have done under coach Watts. We still want to bring that intensity on defense every night. But I think there are some new things that we can mesh into that that may work better with the group we have this year. So I think you will see a lot of what we have done in the past with some tweaks thrown in.”
Now that summer practices have begun the focus for the Lady Devils will be to bring along the new players and get them familiar with the system as quickly as possible.
“We’ve got this crazy June period we’re in right now, and we have lot to get in. The big thing is trying to get the freshmen familiar with our system. We have some really good veteran players back, but we have to get those young girls ready to play. Then we’re trying to balance that with running our kids camp and sharing girls with volleyball and soccer. It feels like a whirlwind right now, but we are hitting the ground running, and we are excited for what is to come.”
Holt will have some big shoes to fill as Watts set the bar high for what Greeneville girls basketball can accomplish. The Lady Devils won 274 times in Watts’ 13 seasons. Under Watts Greeneville advanced to the state tournament three times and state sectionals six times.
The Lady Greene Devils went 23-11 this season, winning the District 2-3A Tournament and finishing runner up in the Region 1-3A Tournament.
