Wright Hired as BU Women’s Basketball Coach

The Bluefield University women’s basketball team will get a fresh start with the 2024-2025 season as new head coach Jake Wright enters the picture.

After the team’s 4-23 overall record in 2023-2024, a fresh start and a burst of motivation is exactly what the Lady Rams need. Coach Wright has a background in both coaching and playing basketball that is sure to push the team to greatness on and off the court.

Coach Wright committed to play basketball at Berry College before transferring to Bryan College. At Bryan, Coach Wright soon accepted the role as a student assistant coach and later a graduate assistant coach. After Bryan, he took a coaching job at Cleveland State Community College before becoming the head girls basketball coach at Scott High School. Coach Wright said his biggest inspiration growing up was his father, who actually served as his coach.

“It allowed me to see how many lives he was able touch in those years,” Coach Wright said about watching his father coach. He said it also inspired him to become a coach so that he might have the opportunity to change people’s lives.

In charge with the task of finding the new women’s basketball coach, athletic director Corey Mullins stressed the important qualities the program needed in a coach to help grow the players and the program.

“I want a coach who is going to help our athletes grow spiritually, academically, and physically,” Mullins said. “When you find somebody that has those qualities, it enhances their ability to recruit quality student-athletes, and it helps develop that program the right way.”

Mullins said he was also looking for someone who has a vision for the team not just for this season but seasons to come. He said Coach Wright made it “very clear from the beginning” that he had the core values to help this team grow.

“Family was important to him, and that is a quality that this program needed,” Mullins said. “Women’s basketball needed somebody who could come to BU and understand how to get the team to play team first and how women’s basketball could impact our campus and greater community.”

Mullins said many talented candidates applied for the position, but Coach Wright was the best at articulating his vision for the program, and for Coach Wright, he said it was easy saying yes to the offer to lead the program. He said Bluefield is the perfect place for his son to grow up and see the world through the people and its environment.

“BU felt like home the minute I came to campus for the interview,” Wright said. “It is a place I believe we can grow on and off the court and achieve many great things.”