MADISON TOWNSHIP — Doug Rickert has worn just about every hat there is to wear at Madison, but he’ll add one more to his collection next winter.

Madison’s former baseball, boys basketball coach and current athletic director will take over as the girls basketball coach for the 2025-26 season. He succeeds Phil Schmook, who stepped down after piloting the Rams to an 8-15 record last year.

“Someone came up to me the other day and asked, ‘Do you realize you’re going to be the head coach of three sports at Madison?’ And it didn’t even cross my mind,” Rickert sad. “I have a stepdaughter on the team, so I’ve known a ton of these girls since when I helped out in junior high.

“It’s a matter of wanting to see them succeed.”

If Rickert’s track record as a head coach is any indication, success will soon follow.

A Madison graduate, Rickert was the head baseball coach from 1999 to 2019. He led the Rams to 16 sectional, nine conference and four district championships while piling up more than 300 victories.

We’ve got to get the girls excited about playing basketball.

New Madison girls basketball coach Doug Rickert

He guided the boys basketball program for five seasons from 2007 to 2012, fashioning a 67-45 record. Madison won the Ohio Cardinal Conference championship in 2009 and claimed the first district championship in more than 60 years in 2011.

Rickert inherits a program that hasn’t won a postseason game since 2019. He will be the third head coach in the past four seasons.

“I think a lot of them were hurt when (Schmook) left. We were making some strides,” said Rickert, who was a assistant last year. “I felt bad for them, so I wanted to continue what we started and hopefully make us a respectable basketball team around here.”

Rickert will welcome back just about the entire roster from last year. Madison finished fifth in the seven-team OCC.

“We do get a lot back and I think we can be dangerous,” Rickert said. “We’ve got some good things going for us.”

Madison has won or shared six of the past eight OCC girls soccer titles and two of the last three softball championships. Rickert would like to see the girls basketball program match the success of Madison’s other girls programs.

“We’ve just got to get it like every other sport here at Madison. We’ve got to get the girls excited about playing basketball,” Rickert said. “I look at what Scott Sellers is doing at Clear Fork and what Natalie Lantz is doing at Shelby. They’ve got younger girls playing and they’ve built consistent winners.”

It takes more than buy-in from the athletes, Rickert said.

“When we had good baseball teams and good boys basketball teams, I had good parents who wanted to help at the younger levels,” Rickert said. “They took kids to leagues and camps in the summer and put them in competitive situations because they wanted to see their kids succeed at this level.”

The Rams already have experienced some success this summer, winning a recent shootout at Mount Union. Eight players made the trip to Alliance and the group went 4-0.

“Those eight girls worked their tails off and they won. They got their t-shirts and they had a good time,” Rickert said. “We’ve got to focus on the small victories, even if that means getting a few more girls in the gym.

“We’ve got to get them to buy in because it’s like I told them the other day: Everything we do matters.”

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