By RICK PETERSON
TopSports.news
Brent Reese-Hackett is getting a late start in his new position as Topeka West's head girls basketball coach, but will be looking to use his impressive background as a player and experience as a coach to make up for long time.
Former TCU basketball standout Brent Reese-Hackett is the new head girls basketball coach at Topeka West. [Photo by Rick Peterson/TSN]
Reese-Hackett is taking over for Jeff Skar, who resigned after the 2022-2023 season, and Reese-Hackett was a late hire after Topeka West hit a snag that delayed the hiring process, accepting the job last month as teams across the state were finishing up their summer offseason work.
"It was late,'' Reese-Hackett admitted. "I looked at an email (Monday) and the accepted offer was July 11th.''
But it's hard to question Reese-Hackett's basketball pedigree, which could come into play as the new West coach plays catchup.
A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Reese-Hackett was a standout at Division I Texas Christian University from 2004-2008, appearing in 122 games with 88 starts.
Reese-Hackett finished his career with 1,098 points for the Horned Frogs while connecting on 190 3-pointers.
He went on to play professionally three seasons in Lithuania before embarking on his coaching career.
Reese-Hackett spent a season on Dave Meseke's girls basketball staff at Topeka West and a year on Bob Wells' girls staff at Shawnee Heights while also holding coaching positions at various other levels.
"I've done a lot of AAU coaching and over the years I've been in skill training, player development,'' Reese-Hackett said. "I've coached the last four years with Nike Pro Skills, so I was kind of behind the scenes and working with a number of high school teams in Texas.''
Reese-Hackett, who is a staff member at Highland Park Central Elementary School working as a mental health mentor, said he jumped at the opportunity to return to West.
"It was one of those things where it seemed right,'' he said. "Knowing that I had been here before and to kind of see everything come full circle and be able to come back, it felt good. It felt like it was a good spot for me.''
Because he was hired late, Reese-Hackett missed basically the whole summer of working with his new team, but has been trying to get acquainted with the West players.
"The last week or so I've been building a dialogue with some of the girls,'' he said. "Zoe (Clark), one of my key seniors, has done a good job of kind of introducing some of the girls saying, 'Hey, we finally have got a coach now.'
"We met up at the gym during the time that we could and I have met about five or six of the solid returning players. Zoe has done a good job as far as kind of keeping that group together throughout the summer. Last year's coaching staff has been really helpful. They've given me access to the social media accounts and I've got the Huddle account so I've been watching a lot of film.''
Topeka West will conduct strength and conditioning workouts four days a week this fall before starting official workouts in November.
"There's some things you can work on and there's ways to get better, but officially we cannot be in the gym working with a basketball,'' Reese-Hackett said. "I feel like that's kind of my advantage going into this situation that I know how to work at an efficient level to get the most out of the situation.''
Topeka West is coming off a 7-15 season and Reese-Hackett said the key this season will be to make steady improvement.
"That's my mentality anyway, to get better every day, have your head down and work as hard as you can,'' he said. "One day you'll look up and hopefully there are great things that have happened.''
