Dareian Hilliard knows he has big shoes to fill. Previous Warren Central Girl’s basketball coach Jackie Martin-Glass 130-116 during her tenure with the Lady Vikes, and went 23-9 last season. Martin-Glass became the head coach for the Hinds Community College girl’s basketball team, and the school went to Hilliard for their new coach after he had recently joined the Vikings boys’ team staff as an assistant coach. Now, Hilliard feels he is up for the challenge of following Martin-Glas at Warren Central.

With 23 years of experience coaching high school boys and girls basketball, most recently as the head coach for the Lanier high school boys team and with a stop at Raymond high school before that, it’s safe to say  Hilliard knows how to approach his newest coaching gig.

“I’m very excited,” Hilliard said. “I know the team did well last year, and I think they have some players that can come back and be very productive this coming season.”

Hilliard has only had three practices with his new team, but he’s trying to get them acclimated quickly, because their summer league starts up next week.

“Anytime you come in to a new situation, you try to establish that relationship, and just hope they buy in to what they’re selling.”

Some coaches are stubborn and have a rigid system that they force their players to try and get accustomed to.

But more and more, modern coaches see the benefit in first seeing what their roster’s strengths are and adapting to it, and making a more player-friendly system. Instead of molding the players to fit the system and force them out of their comfort zone, they mold the system to highlight the players best qualities.

Hilliard’s coaching philosophy reflects the latter, as he has’t pinpointed his team’s offensive or defensive schemes yet.

“I’ll adjust to the players,” Hilliard explained. “We’ll see what the strengths are on this team, and then we’ll adjust to see what is going to be the best for us as we go down this journey.”

Hilliard also got some insight into what has worked for the Lady Vikes in the past from Martin-Glass.

“You always want to look and figure out if you’re going to be a man-defense club or a zone-defense club, and we talked to coach Glass and heard what worked best for them,” Hilliard said.

“Then we’ll look and see what they are capable of doing, and we’ll start summer league play next week so that’ll give us a good feel on what direction we want to go with that,” Hilliard continued.

Though his time with the team has been limited, Hilliard said he was already impressed with the athleticism of his new squad and how well they ran the floor.

Even with just a quick look at his new team, Hilliard had high aspirations for the group, in the present and in the years moving forward.

“My goals are to be a district  champion, get a state tournament berth, getting to the coliseum and winning a gold ball for the state championship,” Hilliard said.