GRANITE QUARRY — Trey Ledbetter is an East Rowan lifer and has spent a lot of that life coaching the Mustangs.
“Always loved having that Mustang emblem right there on my heart when I was wearing my shirt or jacket,” Ledbetter said. “I love East Rowan. I’ve coached a long time now and I’ve never coached anywhere else.”
Ledbetter stepped down recently. It’s at least a temporary sports retirement for the 43-year old, who played at East and has been an assistant as well as head coach at East.
When his retirement was announced, he got calls from coaches all over who respected what he’s done — from Mike Gurley, John Davis, and so on.
Seth Wyrick, who played basketball for Ledbetter in the 2010s, has been named as the interim coach to replace him, although that could turn out to be a long-term deal, as Wyrick also shows signs of being an East Rowan lifer.
“Trey and I are cousins, have even taken some family beach trips together,” the 29-year-old Wyrick said. “But with the age difference, our relationship was always more like uncle and nephew. He’s been a great mentor for me. I’ve coached under him as a jayvee coach and varsity assistant. He’s shared a lot of knowledge. East Rowan will keep doing a lot of the same stuff with me coaching that we did when Trey was head coach.”
Ledbetter is unique in Rowan basketball history, as he’s had three separate stints as East’s head coach. One of those three was taking over at midseason in a tough situation and getting a 2-23 team to the finish line. Officially, he’s been a head coach 7.5 seasons, with 42 wins, 137 losses.
Coaching wins and losses are what they are, but players win or lose the games. Ledbetter’s teams were generally smaller and slower and shallower than the schools they were playing. He worked for those 42 wins. He probably worked even harder during the 137 losses.
“We’re in a league with Cabarrus schools,” Ledbetter said. “The guys they put on a basketball court are men. A lot of times we were going up against them with young kids, babies, really, in a basketball sense. I know we always fought. We scrapped. I know we always did our best. We never wanted anyone to enjoy playing East.”
It’s not an easy thing to win boys basketball games at East, although Greg McKenzie made it look pretty routine for a few years in the 2000s when the Mustangs had the perfect storm of exceptional coaching combined with quite a few of the best players in program history.
If you scroll down the page for all-time wins by Rowan boys basketball coaches, you won’t find an East coach until you get to No. 16 on the list. That’s Rick Roseman, who had 113 wins in 13 seasons.
Ledbetter cited the same reasons that coaches frequenly cite when they step down. Family comes first. He has a freshman daughter (Kinsley) and he doesn’t want to miss any of her games. He also owns a business. He’s not a teacher at the school. The family vending business that Ledbetter’s father, Jamey, started, is still thriving and growing.
“I worked for my dad when I was in high school and I was playing three sports, so I stayed busy,” Ledbetter said. “It’s still a good business, but AI is changing some things. Seth’s brother (Samuel) is good with the technology and is my right-hand man in the business. The business does take a lot of my time and a lot of my energy.
Wyrick has more time and he also has the advantage of being employed at East as a teacher/coach. He’s currently an assistant football coach, so he’s been juggling those duties with getting basketball workouts going. The first official basketball practice is Nov. 2, but hoops is almost a year-round sport now if you’re going to compete.
“The main thing is it’s not going to be a hard transition for our guys,” Wyrick said. “They already know me and I know them. We’ve had 25 kids at workouts, so I’m positive and excited. We’ve got some very good players. I told my wife that I’m going to be at the school a lot. She said, ‘Well you were going to be there anyway with the jayvees. You might as well be there as the head coach.'”
Wyrick brings a wide range of experiences as an athlete to head coaching. He was a superstar receiver in football for the Mustangs, combining with his brother, the quarterback, to break all sorts of school and county records. The Wyricks played varsity football from 2012-14 and graduated in 2015.
Seth still holds the county records for career receptions (189) and career receiving yards (2,948). He set county season records with 102 catches for 1,622 yards in 2014. His 35 TD catches isn’t a record, but it’s high on the all-time county list. He played in the Shrine Bowl.
Seth also played basketball and baseball (for coach Brian Hightower). He was a good player in those sports, but he wasn’t a star, so he learned what it was like to find a role on the team, execute it and contribute to success.
The Wyricks were recruited avidly coming out of high school by Tusculum, but there was a change in coaching staffs, and they never got a chance there. They came back home to Catawba and made the travel squad, but they never made an impact on the field. They weren’t getting much scholarship money and they weren’t playing, so it was tough to stay in school.
Seth was out of school and working for a while in the family lawn care and landscaping business, but then he did go back in school and finished his degree work at UNC Charlotte.
That degree made his parents happy. His mother, Laurie, was an East lifer as a teacher and coach. His father, Todd, is well known as clerk of court for Rowan County.
While he was a student at Charlotte, one of Wyrick’s final classes involved an internship as a coach at Mooresville Middle School, where one of his players was current West Rowan quarterback Aiden Donnelly.
Wyrick eventually was hired at Erwin Middle School. It didn’t take him long to make it across the street from Erwin to East a few years ago.
Wyrick confirmed that Brian Flynn, East’s head football coach, will be helping with basketball. Flynn’s son, Cooper, the jayvee football team’s quarterback, is expected to be on the jayvee basketball team.
“Seth will bring a lot of energy and a new vision to the program,” Ledbetter said. “He’ll do a great job.”
East was very young last season, but often competed well and should be better this season.
Ledbetter will miss jumping around on the sideline, but he says he’ll be the Mustangs’ biggest fan and Wyrick’s biggest fan.
“I’ll take a little bit of pride in every game East wins,” he said. “They brought me back as head coach a few years ago and asked me to change the culture, and I worked hard to do that. I’m know I’m leaving the program in better shape than it was when I was hired.”
