ROCKINGHAM - It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the Richmond Senior High School athletics department, and Richmond County native Teddy Moseley is the newest installment to the revolving door of coaching changes around campus.
Moseley, 39, was officially introduced last Friday, June 1, as the new Lady Raiders head varsity basketball coach. His hiring comes as the replacement of now former head coach Rosalind McDonald, who led the program for the last three seasons.
“I’m very excited to have this opportunity,” Moseley said of his new position. “One of the things that’s so great is to come back and coach where I went to school and where I played. I tell my students all the time that these are the same halls that I walked when I was here, and it’s the same court I played on.”
A civics and economics teacher at Richmond, Moseley is wrapping up his second year at the high school. However, he has an extensive history of teaching within Richmond County, and perhaps more appropriately, a lengthy playing and coaching career that makes him the best fit for the job.
During his senior year of high school in 1996, Moseley was a starting point guard who helped lead the Raiders to their first of back-to-back state championship title games. Also on that team was current Raiders head varsity basketball coach Donald “Bootsie” Pettigrew, who was a year younger.
After redshirting as a freshman at St. Andrews University, Moseley transferred to Francis Marion University in Florence, S.C., and found his way back to Richmond for the 2004 basketball season. He acted as the boys junior varsity coach for two seasons (2004-2005, 2005-2006), before taking the boys basketball head coaching job at Rockingham Middle School, where he spent seven straight seasons coaching the Rockets (2008-2014). Moseley returned this past school year, while still teaching at Richmond, to coach the Rockets.
“Bootsie and I started our playing career together at Rockingham Junior High School,” Moseley recalled, also saying he helped out with the Raiders varsity team this past season. “He was a year behind me when we played for the state championship in 1996. When I heard about the open position, I was definitely interested. And now I consider it a privilege to coach at Richmond with from my former teammate.”
Not only will his new role be his first varsity level position, but it will also be the first time Moseley will captain a girls squad. Pettigrew just wrapped up his first full varsity season this past year, and the two former teammates are looking to get Richmond’s programs on the up-and-up, with Moseley confident with the group of Lady Raiders he’s acquiring.
Under McDonald in her final season, the Lady Raiders went 6-15 overall, with a 3-11 record in the Sandhills Athletic Conference, which was good enough for a sixth-place finish out of eight teams. Though their record was under the .500 mark, the Lady Raiders were competitive in all of their games, losing 14 of their regular season games by a slim margin of 8.14 points per game.
As for Moseley, he witnessed many of those close games, and is something that he’s going to use to his advantage as he prepares to ramp up summer workouts.
“The girls were really competitive and always in games this season,” Moseley said. “One thing I noticed was how young the team is, and how much speed it has at the guard position. That’s a plus -- all the right puzzle pieces are there, it’s my job to change them around and make them fit.”
Losing only three seniors from this past season, Moseley inherits a core group of young players and hopes to identify and utilize each player’s strengths. One of those returning players will be rising junior guard Allexis Swiney, who led the Lady Raiders in scoring this season, netting 9.7 points per game. Also expected back for Richmond will be fellow rising juniors guards Keionna Love, Layne Maultsby and Hailey Miller. In the mix is rising senior guard Taliah Wall, who Moseley anticipates to become the team’s senior leader.
Making the move to the varsity team this year will be rising junior center Jardai Tillman and rising sophomore point guard Jayla McDugald. Moseley will also look to get a lot of production from rising sophomore guard Jakerra Covington.
“I’m thinking of taking Allexis off the ball a little, giving her a chance to score more points,” Moseley explained, noting that McDougald will likely take over the primary floor general responsibilities. “Keionna has good height, and shoots well, so I plan to move her around and use her in the post and on the perimeter, too.
“I’m also expecting big things from Layne and Hailey, as they’re both great spot up shooters,” Moseley continued. “Taliah will be a key factor when it comes to senior leadership.”
In terms of what he expects his team to do on the court, Moseley is excited to get the team practicing as soon as possible. Noting that high school sports are becoming a “year round commitment” like college athletics, Moseley held a team meeting Tuesday and hopes to get his team ready for the Powerade State Games in Greensboro on June 22-24. He believes that will be a “good measuring stick” of where the program is.
“It’s going to take full commitment from everyone,” Moseley said of what it’s going to take to get the Lady Raiders back on track. “I’ve always believed, especially with high school basketball, that if you put up more shots than your opponent, you can win games.
“We’re going to run an up-tempo style of play, press and play full court defense,” he added. “Our goal will be to force turnovers and score transition baskets. Everything starts on the defensive end, and it will take a complete team effort to do that.
With the amount of versatile players he has at his disposal, Moseley further explained that he wants to “keep other teams off balance” and hopes his players will buy into the philosophy of “wanting to dictate the flow of the game.” He also expressed his hopefulness to “adjust the players” to his system.
Moseley won’t be the only one holding a clipboard on the sideline. He has brought on two assistant coaches in Whitney Smith and Taneka Reader, both of whom have experience coaching. Smith, who teaches English at Richmond, spent some time coaching the Lady Red Rams basketball team when she taught at Hamlet Middle School. Reader has coached local AAU teams, bringing more experience to the bench.
“Whitney was a good player in college,” Moseley said of the former Campbell University forward (2007-2011). “She knows a lot about the game, and it’s her knowledge, especially about playing in the post, that will be helpful. Taneka will be helpful with the guards, because she knows how hard I am on my guards.”
Another positive about having Smith and Reader helping him out is that he’s never had the pleasure of having an assistant coach before, let alone two. Now with two more sets of eyes on the court, Moseley says he can “rely on them to help with making adjustments during games.”
Moseley is married to his wife Anna, and they have two children: Dexter (5) and Landry (22 months).
