With the Levelland Lobo basketball program parting ways with Jordan Windholz, a new era has begun with Head Basketball Coach Kendall Durrett taking the role.
Coach Durrett was the assistant coach this past year when the Lobos finished their season in the second round of playoffs.
Coach Durrett has been with Levelland basketball program for the past three years with him taking the reigns in his fourth year.
He graduated from LHS in 2017 then continued his education at Texas Tech where he graduated in 2021.
During his first two years he coached at the Levelland Middle School where he achieved a record of 31-1.
This is going to be Coach Durrett’s first year as the head of the program which will allow him to showcase what he has learned up untill this point in his career.
“The game is forever evolving and my philosophy is always changing in the sense of keeping up with times and adapting to find new innovative stuff and approaches to things,” said Coach Durrett. “Im always learning things from different places and people. I want to bring that to our kids, see what type of kids we have and see if it can apply to our team and our program. It’s a blessing that I got to coach at the middle school for my first two years because it taught be a lot about myself, how to love, how to lead and just teach me how to grow as a person and as a man.”
Although he has had some great success in the past few years, Durrett is staying focused on the big goal of getting better everyday on and off the court to make a big impact for the program.
“I don’t have the secret to success and I don’t want to reinvent anything, but I think I’ve had the the ability to learn, listen and adapt,”explained Durrett. “I’m very competitive and I am not afraid of trying to find a better way to do things.”
“As much as I hate losing, there’s always something to learn from it which allows us to get better as a group.”
From graduating at Levelland ISD and being able to coach his alma mater, Coach Durrett knows this opportunity is something that can be something great.
“Levelland is a great community and being so familiar with a lot of community members makes me excited about the support I know we will receive,” said Coach Durrett. “They are going to support you, be behind you and that is what I talked to our kids about. I told them to hold on to these relationships they are going to form throughout their high school careers and enjoy the ups and downs. We want to be champions in the game of life and win in life.”
Coach Durrett wants his athletes to be able to take away something from the game like he did when he was apart of the program. He wants to teach the way of life through basketball like he learned.
“I’m able to teach this through basketball as it was taught to me. I think it is important for us coaches to be involved in helping these kids develop and become great adults in the future,” said Coach Durrett. “I see myself when I look at these kids and I think that if a lot of people had a hand to help and reach out they can grow and learn to be better people on and off the court, which is what im big on and wanting them to take away from this.”
As far as goals go for his team and him personally, Coach Durrett wants the athletes to grow as men and to be better than yesterday.
“The standard and expectation is high and will remain that way until the end. It has been that way in my life and I want to try to instill that in our youth,” said Coach Durrett. “The expectation is never going to drop, the standard is never going to drop; we’re always going to be here and when you think we’re to that point, we’re going to raise it even more.”
Heading into his first year as head coach, Coach Durrett has big plans for the team and knows there will be lessons learned along the way.
“We have a lot to learn but the biggest goal is to compete at that highest stage in high school ball and be able to make a run in the playoffs and give our district a tough time to handle us,”explained Coach Durrett. “Success in programs start with the little things such as attitude, how you handle yourself and the way we can handle adversity.”