Busy Summer for HS Basketball coaching changes with Segraves back to Dudley, Abell takes over at Page and now Derrick Partee goes to Smith(Grimsley/Northern Guilford jobs still open)

Derrick Partee to Smith High School to take over for Coach Brian Jones…That was announced today and now Coach Partee will go from Dudley to the Panthers’ biggest rival…This is a big and bold move, but the word is Partee wanted to be a head coach….I can still remember Derrick Partee when he was a player for the Panthers back in 1996, when Dudley won the State 4-A Championship, defeating Richmond County in overtime, in the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill…You had Brendan Haywood(UNC/Wizards/Mavericks) in the middle with Jermaine Price at point, plus future Clemson Tigers Vincent Whitt and Braxton Williams(Tiger football)…And there was Derrick Partee and I think Derrick Hicks, Eric’s brother might have been on the ’96 team too….

And there was Derrick Partee….And his dad was very good player and coach back in his day too…I still remember a few Sunday mornings back in the day, when you could find Derrick and his dad at the Spring Valley Court, hooping it up on the outside…..And you look back on Derrick Partee, always a Dudley Panther, but they say he really wanted to be a head coach in a bad way….I think he was looking at several vacant spots around the county and now he has landed the head coaching poistion at Ben L. Smith High School…

Derrick graduated from Dudley High School and then went on to college and I believe it was N.C. A&T and he was getting into coaching over at Dudley, while he was still in college…Derrick was always a student of the game and he loved the game and respected the game and he chose to make the game his life….Memory tells me he did pretty good academically and that should bode him well in the classroom at Smith, or in his new academic capacity at Smith….At one time at Dudley, I believe Derrick had some administrative duties for the Panthers…

From what we have been hearing, Clarence Waddell, the Dudley JV coach from last season, will be headed to Smith with Partee…..Waddell and his Panthers were unbeaten in 2011/2012 and I believe it was about an 8 game season…They ran them through it pretty quick….Partee had coached the JV’s and the 9th grade team prior to Coach Waddell taking the reigns….As for the Dudley kids that were on the varsity this past season, Coach Partee coached nearly all of them while they were on JV’s at Dudley….Coach Waddell just got back from Memphis, Tennesse last week, where he lead a team of local 13 and Under players(Team Felton) to the AAU National Tournament…..

Derrick Partee had been around Dudley so long that most of the people did not call him by his first name, he was just ‘Partee’….Very much respected and well thought-of in the Dudley Panther community and they will miss him, but it is time for him to move on…..

Derrick Partee, now the head boys basketball coach at Ben L. Smith High School…..Have known that kid a long time and he is a very intense competitor….The kids at Smith better be ready, Derrick doesn’t like to lose and he has never really learned how to lose on a regular basis, after all of the success he experienced at Dudley and that is probably a good thing…It is never a good thing to start accepting defeat….Don’t learn to take it and maybe you won’t see it, if it tries to hit you in the face and learn to fall asleep when you hit the bed at night and hit it quickly after you get home…Otherwise you will stay up trying to make conversation with defeat into the night and you can never win that arguement…..

The best of luck to Coach Derrick Partee and to Coach Waddell as they move on to the next step in the careers….Now at Ben L. Smith High School and it will be “Eagle Time” in 2012/2013 instead of “Panther Time” for the young coaches and that will sure take some getting used to….

Read more on the Partee move to Smith High School, from Jason Wolf at the News and Record.com…..
CLICK HERE to get the N&R info and remember I knew these kids back when they were kids and that is why my posts often run long…….