Career  Milestones

Two boys basketball high school head coaches in the greater Wilmington area achieved 400 career wins within weeks of each other. Rodney Orr at Heide Trask Senior High School in Pender County hit 400 in mid-January 2023 and Wells Gulledge at Eugene Ashley High School in New Hanover County attained the milestone victory in late December 2022.

Both coaches have made positive influences on their players throughout the years, developing skills on the court and motivating players to combine their individual talents to work as a team. Players who compete on the court carry lessons with them from these coaches that translated into life on a broader scale.  

While coaching is a sacrifice, the two coaches enjoy helping their players reach their potential both on and off the court. Reaching 400 career victories is a nice accomplishment, but they know winning games isn’t what it is all about.

“A good coach improves your game. A great coach improves your life.”

— Michael Josephson, Former law professor and attorney, founder of Josephson Institute of Ethics

Heide Trask Senior High School

Coach Rodney Orr

Orr was the head coach at Topsail High School from 2000-09, leading the Pirates to their first conference championship in 2007. He was an assistant at Pender High School for two seasons before being hired by Heide Trask Senior High School in 2011. He also coached the Swansboro girls for six seasons, and coached both the boys and girls teams at Heide Trask Senior High School in 2019-20. Several of his players have gone on to play in college.

Congratulations on the 400 wins! Was 400 wins a goal of yours?

“If you stay in the business long enough, you will hit some milestones. When you start out coaching you want to win championships, and then as you get older, it evolves into the relationships, getting along with the kids, teaching them. What have you done to impact this young man, that’s what it becomes about. The 400 wins is nice, but it’s really a testimony to the assistant coaches and the players because you don’t get there without them. And probably the biggest is my wife. We have two kids, and you spend a lot of hours away. She sacrifices to make you successful.”

What made you want to become a coach?

“It came time for my fifth year of college and my parents said, ‘All right, it’s time to graduate so you have to decide what you want to do.’ I enjoyed history, I enjoyed kids, and I enjoyed athletics, so it made me want to be a history teacher and a high school coach.”

Do you have a most memorable season or game?

“There are moments that stand out. Most of them involve either winning a big playoff game, the first time we made it to the Eastern regionals or winning a second-round game like [in late February]. The other really memorable ones are games where you beat your archrival. But what you really remember are not the games, but the players and the relationships that you build with them, and the people that have helped you along the way.”

What is the biggest challenge of coaching?

“Convincing a group of people to sacrifice some of their individual goals to pull together in the same direction. It means there’s a lot of sacrifices that have to be made by everybody. It’s hard to get a group of people to do that, in any walk of life, even adults. It’s one of the great lessons they learn, like being in a family. One of the things we hope high school athletics teaches them is the sacrifices that you have to make to be successful as a group, or unit, or family or team, whatever context that is.”

What do you enjoy most about coaching?

“The relationships that you build with the players, and watching them graduate, and go on and get married and have kids and be successful. The relationships you have with your assistant coaches, and the people that help you, the administration you work for. High school teaching, coaching, is about relationships, and that’s the most rewarding thing.”

Have you found a balance between coaching skills and mindset?

“When they get to the high school level, most of the skill development has been done. We still do some, but most of the better players have had the skill development done. Once they get into high school, now you are talking about motivation, getting someone to sacrifice for the greater good. We all run the same defense, offense. But can you get them to do it to the best of their ability again and again? It is 30 percent strategy to me and 70 percent the mental side.”

Eugene Ashley High School

Coach Wells Gulledge

Gulledge coached at Jacksonville High School, Kinston High School and Parrott Academy in Kinston before coming to Eugene Ashley High School in 2017. In 11 seasons at Kinston, his teams won three state championships and played for a fourth. He was named Associated Press Coach of the Year in 2008. After winning his third state championship, Gulledge was awarded the key to the city of Kinston and Mayor B.J. Murphy declared May 5, 2012, Coach Wells Gulledge Day.

Gulledge played college basketball at Mount Olive College, became a graduate assistant, and is in the school’s Sports Hall of Fame. Several of his players have gone on to play college basketball, and three made it to the NBA — Herbert Hill, Reggie Bullock and Brandon Ingram. He also coached two basketball players who went on to play in the NFL, Quinton Coples and Derek Rivers.

Congratulations on the 400 wins! Was 400 wins a goal of yours?

“Not specifically. It’s just like preparing for other teams. I always prepare for teams by preparing ourselves. And that’s kind of my philosophy when it comes to coaching. I’m worried about what we’re going to do, and what we can and can’t do. That is what I’m focused on, rather than winning and losing.”

What made you want to become a coach?

“My life’s been about timing. The Lord just puts me in where he wants me to be for how long I need to be there. My college coach said he had an assistant’s job open and wanted to know if I would be interested. I went straight from playing into an assistant coaching role at Mount Olive College.”

Do you have a most memorable season or game?

“Each and every one of them. When we were at Kinston, we played in a tournament in Hawaii. We played at Springfield College, where James Naismith started basketball. We played down in Florida; we played in Illinois at a Thanksgiving tournament. We were jet-setting there for a while. That’s a lot of special memories, especially being able to take our kids to Pearl Harbor, taking them to the Polynesian culture center, things that our kids at Kinston had never really seen. Probably 95 percent of our team had never flown before. Your state championship teams are always special but, the older you get, you really look back and say those were special moments for those kids and moments of joy.”

When the players you coached went on to the pros, how did that make you feel?

“If you’ve been around pros, you can identify them at a very, very early age. Their motors are built differently, their skill sets are elite. With some polishing and some hard work, the ones that buy into that, you can watch them soar like eagles.”

What is the biggest challenge of coaching?

“The most challenging point is to get a group of young men to play for the greater goal of one. It is a totally different coaching dynamic now than it was 10 years ago. When Covid came, it changed kids in the way that they learn, their attention spans. We try to go six-seven minutes with what we are teaching or coaching, and we have to move on to another thing. Coaching has had to evolve with technology as well because you aren’t going to capture a kid’s thoughts and their attention if you go over about six-eight minutes.”

What do you enjoy most about coaching?

“I enjoy the challenge. I think everybody has a competitive nature, the question is whether you can bring it out of them or get the best out of somebody. But at the end of the day, it’s about your seniors leaving you a little note, kids that played for you coming back into the locker room, players that are a little bit older now, seeing their families. That’s what high school athletics is about — that you made a difference in somebody’s life. That’s what teaching is all about. Let’s help mold young men and women into being ready for their next evolution of life.”