‘Time to take the next step.’ Douglass hires interim boys’ basketball coach.
Frederick Douglass High School has named former assistant coach Wes Scarberry as its interim head coach of the boys’ basketball program this upcoming season.
Scarberry, a longtime head coach at Model Laboratory School in Richmond who led the Patriots to an 11th Region All “A” Classic title in 2013, has been a teacher at Douglass since 2019 and was on the staff of then-head coach Kurt Young’s 42nd District championship team in 2020.
“It means the world to me to be the head coach here at Frederick Douglass … ,” Scarberry told local media Tuesday afternoon at the school. “My hope is that after two back-to-back region championship games, it’s time to take that next step and win the region, and see what we can do at Rupp Arena.”
Scarberry replaces Jason Moseley, who coached Douglass to back-to-back 42nd District titles and 11th Region finals appearances in the last two years. Moseley began the school year as Douglass’s presumed boys’ coach, but the school posted the position for hire on Aug. 22, three days after reports Moseley had been dismissed from the team.
A Douglass athletics official declined comment about the Moseley situation Tuesday.
Scarberry, an Ohio native and Eastern Kentucky University graduate, coached Model for 12 seasons with an overall record of 174-169 in the 11th Region’s 44th District shared with Madison Central, Madison Southern and Berea. Scarberry led the Patriots to two runner-up finishes in the 44th in addition to the one region All “A” crown.
Prior to arriving at Model, Scarberry was a junior varsity coach and athletic director at East Jessamine for five years. Scarberry lives in Richmond with his wife, Katrina, and their children, Cole, Tyler, Jacey, Jenna, and Paxton.
“It’s my fourth year teaching here now, and just to have a chance — I’ve always told my wife — if I just had a chance to coach at a bigger school, I could do this or I could do that,” Scarberry said. “It’s time to step in those shoes and find out what I can do.”
Model reached the All “A” Classic state quarterfinals and set a school record with 23 wins in the 2012-13 season, also earning Scarberry honors as 11th Region coach of the year. Scarberry had back-to-back winning seasons at Model to close out his tenure there before the school opted to change coaches at the end of the 2019 season. Model hasn’t had a winning record since.
“Basketball is basketball. I’ve always said that,” Scarberry said. “The game itself doesn’t change. The talent level changes quite a bit. We’re talking 80 boys (at Model) versus a school with maybe 800 boys here. So, the talent pool is a lot different.”
Douglass is expected to return a number of key players from its district champions last year, including senior guard Kai Simpson, the team’s second-leading scorer, along with sophomores Armelo Boone and Aveion Chenault and senior Tylon Webb. A number of returners also play football, meaning Scarberry could start the season with a shorter roster as the football postseason plays out in the early days of basketball season.
“The competition that we’ll play here at Douglass is, obviously, a lot higher level than we had at Model, but even there we played schools in Lexington, and we competed against some of the bigger schools in the region,” Scarberry said. “And so I’m very familiar with the region, very familiar with our district and the teams that we play. It’s just a higher level of competition. It’s what I’m looking forward to. It was always my dream to coach at a bigger school and kind of prove that I could do it at this level.”
His expectations are high.
“We want to dominate the 11th Region. We want to dominate our district — to continue to do that after three straight district championships,” Scarberry said. “That’s my hope, just to get our program kind of where our football program is. I feel like we have the talent to do that.”
