Wright City girls basketball coach Doug Smith is focused on the Lady Wildcats’ progress in his first season at the helm of the program. 

Smith takes over for Dustin Elledge, who coached the Lady Wildcats for one season. Smith will be the fourth coach for Wright City in the past four seasons. 

“I think it’s been a really good transition,” Wright City senior Kaedyn Johnson said. “He’s a really great coach. I feel like he’s been pushing us more than we’ve been pushed in the past couple of years. It’s definitely been hard having different coaches every year. But I think this is a really good one and I’m looking forward to our first game.”

Smith thought Wright City’s first week of practice was successful, despite having several players missing due to the FFA National Convention. Smith said their focus early on has been on conditioning and skill work. Smith said he does not think the Lady Wildcats’ skill level is where it needs to be for a varsity program to be successful but lauded the players’ effort level in practice.

“What I’ve been super proud of is just the effort,” Smith said. “You can control effort. You can’t always control some of those other things. And I think the girls are putting out a ton of effort and working really hard. And that’s all I can ask right now. We’re going to keep trying to get better.” 

Smith has run up tempo practices so far and expects the Lady Wildcats to play an up tempo style during games this season. He thinks Wright City has enough athletes and depth to play fast and get up and down the floor. 

“It’s a challenge for some of us. A lot of us aren’t in shape yet,” Wright City guard Paige Rees said last week. “But we will be. I really like the up (tempo) pace… That’s the way I like to play and I hope that we can actually do it in a game. So it’ll be good. It’s a positive. I’m happy about it.” 

Wright City returns all but two players from last year’s 7-17 team but will need to replace about 60 percent of their scoring output from last season. Senior Jasmin Simpson averaged 22.5 points per game and scored over 55 percent of Wright City’s points last season. 

“I definitely think we’re all having to step up in different ways,” Johnson said. “I’m looking forward to stepping into the high post position and definitely trying to be more aggressive with the ball because we don’t have somebody who’s going to be driving all the time.”

Smith’s focus at this point in the season is for the Lady Wildcats to improve and get better each day. 

“Screwing up is a part of playing hard,” Smith said. “And if you’re not messing up when we’re doing drills and you’re not messing up in practice, you’re not playing hard enough. I mean, you are not giving it enough and not getting outside your comfort zone enough. So I want them to go hard enough that they are messing up because that’s how you learn. And so that is my big focus right now.”

Wright City will open the season Dec. 1 with a home game against South Callaway.