Wellington head coach Joe Newman provides instructions to his team earlier this season. 

By Tracy McCue, Sumner Newscow — Joe Newman, the Wellington head boys basketball coach for eight seasons, has submitted his resignation at Monday’s school board meeting.

Newman said he will be teaching social studies at Derby High School and will be an assistant basketball coach for the Derby Panther boys’ basketball program.

Newman was also the boys’ head coach at Belle Plaine High from 2015 to 2018.

In his eight seasons in Wellington, Newman finished 70-100 for a .412 winning percentage. That put him behind Brian Buchanan, who had a .445 winning percentage in his 13 seasons.

This will mark only the fourth head-coach hire in 23 years at WHS boys’ basketball, with the board naming a replacement sometime this spring or summer. Buchanan coached Wellington from 2003 to 2016, and Rick Roitman coached from 2016 to 2018.

One of the features of the Newman program was a player wearing the gold chain as the defensive player of the game as Dusty Bannister is shown here. 

Both Newman’s and Wellington girls’ basketball coach Eric Adams submitted their resignation on Monday night.

Newman had a trying season in 25-26, ending the season at 5-17. But that followed three very successful seasons in which Newman won 43 games, reached two regional sub-state championships, and earned a state tournament berth in 2022-23.

“It was time for a change,” Newman said. “I wanted to coach my oldest son, Jackson, and his buddies through their senior year. I got to do that. I thought this was a good time to do something different.”

Joe Newman as head coach at Belle Plaine.

Newman came to Wellington after an extremely successful tenure at Belle Plaine – coaching the team to a third-place state finish in 2016-17. That was the year with Bo Gooch as a junior and Belle Plaine won an improbable semifinal game of the ages against Kingman to eventually reach the Class 3A State Tournament.

The Dragons would beat Galena in the first round in Hutchinson Sports Arena that year before losing their semifinal and finals game.

Newman, who was an assistant Wellington boys basketball coach for years under Buchanan, decided to return home as the new head coach for the 2017-18 season, replacing Roitman.

He got off to a rough start, going 4-16, 6-15, 6-13, and 6-15 over his first four years.

But things flipped in 2022-23, and the Crusaders pieced together a 15-8 season and got to the state basketball tournament.

Wellington battled Circle on the road for the sub-state championship and was considered the extreme underdog going in, having lost to Circle twice during the regular season. But using a 1-3-1 full-court press with sophomore Carter Burnett in the front, Wellington shut down the packed Circle gymnasium with a 20-point-plus win.

The Crusaders would follow that season up with a 13-9 and 15-7 season, in which they reached the sub-state championship games, losing to Hugoton and Abilene.

In those three seasons, Wellington accumulated more wins than anytime in Crusader boys basketball season. The record was 41 during the 2005-2008 seasons during Buchanan’s early years. Newman would get 43 from 22′-25.’

“I think beating Wichita Collegiate in Collegiate for the first time in school history is also up there for me,” Newman said. “I’ll never forget Brody (Weir’s) game-winning put-back.”