Coach Greene living dream at alma mater Timberland



By Rob Gantt

Special to the HSSR

St. Stephen – It was a dream come true for Roger Greene to get the keys to the Timberland High School girls basketball program prior to last season.

Greene is still living the dream. This winter, the Lady Wolves will have quite an experienced roster for Greene’s second campaign at his alma mater.

“It’s still a dream,” said Greene, a 2007 THS graduate. “It still doesn’t feel real sometimes. When I was in high school, everything was about sports because I played sports. The next best thing is to be able to go into coaching and pour into kids, not just help them become better at basketball but also help them grow as people. At some point the basketball stops bouncing and they have to be ready for the real world. It makes it sweeter that my first job is pouring into the kids here.”

Greene’s first squad in 2024-25 got the most out of its talent. Really with only four or five varsity-ready players, the Lady Wolves shared the region title with Burke High School. The Lady Wolves finished 9-1 in league play.

“Pretty much nobody gave us a chance at that,” said Greene, who took over for Allen Gethers in the spring of 2024 after serving seven years as an assistant. “With us losing five seniors off a team that lost in the first round (in 2023), nobody’s expecting much if you’re being honest. I think this speaks to the drive they have.”

Green emphasizes competition. He drives his players to not just show up and be dialed in on game days. He gets them to compete in practice, the weight room and the classroom.

This summer, the Lady Wolves began building the foundation for the 2025-26 season with 10 scrimmage games during five play dates at Williamsburg Academy, Hunter-Kinard-Tyler, Lexington, Brookland-Cayce and Philip Simmons. They went 7-3 against some tough competition.

“The biggest thing was us getting better offensively,” Greene said. “We have too much fire power, speed and girls who can do good things for us to only score 40 points a game. We want to be in good shape and play good defense, but you’ve got to be able to put it in the hoop. We had opportunities to beat teams by more last year or win games we lost, but we struggled on the offensive end of the court. The times we got it right it looked really good.”

Rising seniors G China Greene, G Zion Priloeau and F Samara Scott will be multi-year starters along with rising junior F Kennahdi Murrell. That group led the Lady Wolves in every statistical category in 2024-25.

Greene is filled with optimism about the 2025-26 campaign.

“The opportunity to coach at my alma mater is a dream, really,” Greene said. “There’s no better way to start your coaching career than at home. I’m honored. I know the history of the program and the coaches who came before me. It’s a dream come true.”