By Chris Parker
Parkview girls basketball has a new head coach in Brian Loudis this season.
Loudis has 10 years of coaching experience with stops around the area. Most recently, Loudis spent the past four seasons as head coach at Hickory Hills Middle School for the eighth grade boys and seventh grade girls.
He takes over a Parkview program coming off a one-win season and five straight seasons under .500.
“I set a goal for myself to one day be a high school head coach, but I never thought it would happen this quickly,” Loudis said. “I honestly didn’t even know the job had opened when I began getting phone calls and texts from people encouraging me to apply. Living in Springfield my whole life, I know how robust the basketball community is here, and I knew of the prior success that Parkview girls basketball has had. After talking it over with my family and praying about it, I decided I wanted the challenge of rebuilding the program. The Lady Vikings have faced challenges in recent seasons, and I see this as a chance to turn things around and build a culture of resilience and growth. I believe that every setback is an opportunity for growth, and I am eager to instill a winning mindset. I want us to be a contender for a conference and district titles. While continuing to build of last year’s success making that an expectation for our program.”
Youth will rule the roster for Parkview this season.
“We are a young team with no seniors, being led by juniors,” Loudis said. “We have some returning from last year that we will look to for the leadership of this team, but from what I have seen over the summer and our off season, we have the pieces there to make this a successful team and season. Being my first year with this team, everyone will play a big role to be successful and win games. Last year this team was struck with injuries and many of the players were thrown in quickly to step up. So, this year they will be more prepared to go out and execute those roles and do what is asked of them.”
Early on, the players have been receptive to the new coaching staff.
“I can already see it just from our workouts that this team is settling in with the change and they are responding very well to myself and our staff,” Loudis said. “I see that our biggest strength this year will be our determination to go out each game and leave it all on the floor to fight hard for those wins. Their strength is also playing together as a team and being there for each other. It will be fun to see it all come together as the season progresses.”
Loudis will focus on helping his team improve both in the skill of the game but also the mental side.
“For me it’s not about the wins or losses, but last year they only won one game and I know in a lot of those games, they were in a position where they could have won,” Loudis said.
“Most of the skill and talent is there. We just have to work on maximizing each other’s strengths and working as a team to get the win. We want to get those wins early on to give us the confidence we need, especially going into conference play and knowing the new competition we will face in the COC.”
Parkview travels to Joplin on Nov. 19th for a jamboree with Hillcrest, Sarcoxie and the host Eagles. The Vikings open the regular season Dec. 2-5 at the Carl Junction Classic.
“I want to see the team morale be boosted coming off a tough season last year. I want the players to have a renewed passion for the sport and be excited going into each game and wanting to go out and compete together,” Loudis said. “In addition to that, if we are getting the Parkview Girls Basketball name back out there, getting people talking about the team again and increasing community involvement to rise towards those district championships and beyond, I’ll consider it a success.”
