Central Lafourche has hired the man who will lead their girls’ basketball program into the future.
The Trojans announced this week that Derrell Joubert will be the team’s coach, replacing outgoing coach Tora Danos who resigned earlier this summer to take a special education teaching job at Destrehan High School.
Joubert has head coaching experience. He was the head coach at Hathaway High School last season. He also has been extremely active as a coach on the AAU circuit.
As a player, Joubert was a standout. He played at Northwest High School, then had collegiate stints at both LSU-Shreveport and then also McNeese.
Joubert spoke on local radio this week and said he is excited to get rolling with the Trojans, saying that this is an opportunity that he said he believed was too good to pass up.
“I’m just trying to build with this team and build with the community,” Joubert said. “I’m trying to help the girls develop — not only on the court — but off the court as well. And from there, hopefully make a push in the playoffs.”
Joubert’s team is one in a bit of transition.
The Trojans battled adversity last year and won just 4 games. Their best player on paper heading into the season did not play with the team after a suspension and several underclassmen were asked to step into roles they probably weren’t yet ready for at the varsity level, which caused the team to take some lumps.
But Joubert said he also thinks that with lumps come battle scars and ultimately toughness and he thinks that he’s inheriting a group that is ready to use those tough moments from last year and grow from them.
He said he has not yet had a chance to meet with the team formally, but he also added that he has popped in the tape and has watched games from last year, adding that he likes what he sees in terms of effort and toughness — two traits that he said you have to have to be a successful program.
“I know it’s a young roster,” he said. “I will be meeting with the girls soon and I’m very excited about that. For me, I’m just ready to hit the ground running and get started going to work.”
When asked, Joubert said he is a coach who wants his teams to play fast and with tempo. He said he will be working to teach the Trojans that success starts on the defensive end of the floor and that the best way to play good offense is to compliment that with aggressive, turnover-forcing defense.
“I like to play a fast style of basketball,” he said. “Both offensively and defensively. I like to use defense and use that as a motivator and as a tool to score on the other end. But ultimately, I just love to just set my kids up, set my players up in spots to where they can be successful and also push them to utilize their strengths to help our team.”
The new Trojans coach attacked the elephant in the room: numbers.
The Central Lafourche community has become a soccer community with the Trojans’ program dominating and having as much success as any other public school soccer team in the state.
Joubert said he knows that right now on campus, soccer is the top winter sport, but he also added that he will work within the community to try and get more young people playing basketball at a younger age to try and get them to continue to play the sport when they are in high school and with the Trojans.
He said his ties to AAU Basketball will help that and he has plans to be active to meet kids earlier and show them that the Trojans’ program is a desirable one to be part of.
“The young kids are very important to work with because that’s your foundation as a coach,” Joubert said. “Work with those kids at the junior high level and also at the elementary school level. I’m very excited to get started and get those kids going and that way they can have a very easy transition when they get to us and are coming into high school.”