With the 2023-2024 basketball season coming up soon, I had the pleasure to interview Coach Blundo, Head Coach of the New Castle Red Hurricane boys basketball team.

Q: What are you looking most forward to this season?

I’m looking forward to working with a predominantly new group of players and the challenges that come with that, this is a very young group that we will try to grow and improve every day

Q: What will the team’s hardest challenge be this year?

Probaby to overcome our inexperience, playing in 6A where we are playing against schools that are half the size of ours, that is always a challenge.

Q: Who will be your top-performing players this year, after losing half of your starting players from last year?

Well we have lost all of our players from last year exception of Ralphie, he is our only returning experienced player. Ralphie should have a good year for us as well as Damian Harrison, Kyrell Harris, Noreaga Jackson, JT Warren, and Damarian Young

Q: What would you teach your players besides basketball? 

I think the relationships between the work and the commitment and the work ethic that you learn being apart of a team of 17 guys, you can draw great parallels to life that way. We want our kids to create good habits that allow them to be successful long after they are out of here.

Q: Before a big game, how do you motivate your players?

Well If I have to motivate our players, then we are probably are not in a good place, I think just putting on that uniform that says New Castle is enough motivation for them to go out and represent well

Q: If a player seems like they are in a slump, how would you try to help them get out of the slump?

We encourage our players to just keep playing, move on to the next play and not worry about what happened and focus on what we are doing next and that’s been a core principle in our program

Q: How many more years do you plan on coaching or is that still something you haven’t thought of yet?

Coaching here is one of those things that you step away each year and evaluate where you are at and whether or not you have the energy to give to the program what it requires and when the time comes that I do not have that energy then I know its time to step away

Thank you Mr Blundo for a nice interview Good luck to him and the team this year. GO CANES!