CATTARAUGUS — It takes no small amount of confidence to take a varsity high school coaching job at just age 24, but Josh Forster describes it as a dream come true.
Forster willingly took on the challenge to lead the Cattaraugus-Little Valley boys basketball program this winter after previously serving as modified coach. He knows it’s a tough job, but he’s still excited at the start of the winter sports season.
“It’s something I’ve always wanted to do and I was starting to see a lot of improvement as far as the modified program and I was kind of just eager,” Forster said of why he took the job. “I wanted to be up there. Originally I thought it was just going to be JV this year but some circumstances changed and I got the varsity and I was ready to take it, so I took it.”
The Timberwolves return seven letterwinners, two of them starters, from a 3-15 team in 2017-18. The returning starters are senior guard/forward Mike Perkins and senior guard Shane O’Neill.
C-LV has seven seniors: Perkins, O’Neill, Damion Ly, Tyler Drewiega, Derek Dechow, Jordan Walters and Bryce Gearman. Nick Burroughs and Jason Young are C-LV’s two juniors and Nick Savidge and Elijah Perkins are the sophomores.
Taking on the job with a long-term vision, Forster wants to establish some standards of play for all three levels in the school district: varsity, junior varsity and modified.
“The hope is to take it and basically build from the top down,” he said. “I want to be able to tell my modified coach and my JV coach, ‘This is what I’m looking for… these are going to be my players coming up, this is what I want them to know.’ The communication is what I’m really looking for.
“Really it doesn’t sound like we had that too much before. Nothing against the old coaches or anything, they kind of were just there to get through it, it seemed like. I’m looking to be competitive from now on out.”
How does he want C-LV basketball to look? Aggressive, up-tempo and focused on defense first.
“I just want to look like we know what we’re doing and be competitive basically,” he said. “I want to see us hustling all the time, playing good defense, rebounding well. Scoring’s going to come. That’s what kids work on in the summer all the time by themselves, shooting the basketball and stuff. They don’t work on defense and stuff now.”
While his players haven’t experienced much winning yet in basketball, Forster commended the upperclassmen for their effort so far.
“As far as my seniors and even some of the juniors that have been in the program, the biggest difference I see because I’ve been at their practices before is they’re giving me their all in practice,” he said. “It might not show up during the game, as far as how hard we work, but they’re giving me everything they have at the practice.”
While C-LV went 0-2 in its opening weekend at the Salamanca Tip-Off Tournament, Perkins made the all-tournament team. Forster sees him as a leader for his effort, defense and rebounding.
“He works hard,” Forster said. “We’ve played two games and he’s kind of been my go-to guy. It might not show up as far as scoring, but he’s basically my go-to guy.
“Traditionally we’ve played a lot of zone in the past. We’re trying to go to more of a man and a press with a little bit of zone in there. Just defensively, he’s been all over the floor. He’s talking, he’s aggressive with the ball. He might not score a whole lot but he makes things happen for us. People have to know where he is on the court at all times because that’s our guy who we go through. He gives me everything he’s got, especially defensively.”
Forster set an internal goal for his team, which will decide whether or not they make the playoffs this season.
“My team knows what we need to do in order to do that, but I’m just going to leave it at that because it’s kind of between us,” he said. “Making the playoffs is going to be our goal and playing some competitive basketball games, not losing by … you know, as big of a margin as it has been in the past.”
