Josh Worrell, who has served as the Head Boys Basketball Coach at King's Fork High School in Suffolk for all 13 seasons of its existence, has announced he will be stepping down.
Worrell, who said, "the decision is the right decision for me and my family," will continue as a health and physical education teacher, per a press release from Suffolk Public Schools.
Building the Bulldogs into a contender from scratch, which included a winless 0-22 campaign their first year and just a 2-42 mark through two seasons, wasn't easy. However, Worrell helped mold King's Fork into one of the top programs in all of Virginia and maintain that level of success as a consistent contender.
By year three at the helm, King's Fork won 18 games and qualified for the regionals. The very next season, they went 24-6 overall, won their first ever Southeastern District Tournament and reached the State Playoffs.
The pinnacle for Worrell and the Bulldogs came in 2008-09. Led by four Division I talents in Jaquon Parker (Cincinnati), Jamar Wertz (UMBC), Davante Gardner (Marquette) and Jay Copeland (Ball State then later NC Central), King's Fork won the Group AAA State Championship and finished 31-1 overall. His Bulldogs rallied from 19 points down to defeat William Fleming - led by NBA player Troy Daniels and former Delaware standout Jamelle Hagins - 49-47 in the title game.
During his tenure, Worrell has been named AAA State Coach of the Year and Eastern Region Coach of the Year as well as Ironclad Conference Coach of the Year and Southeastern District Coach of the Year. King's Fork had 11 straight winning seasons and made the regional playoffs nine of those times, also appearing in the State Tournament for a third time in 2015 when it fell to Norcom in the Group 4A State Championship game.
"Coach Worrell has been a major part of the foundation on which King's Fork High School athletics has been built," stated King's Fork Activities Director Randy Jessee. "He not only was a very successful coach, but always had the best interest of the student athlete in mind. He will be missed as a coach, but we expect him to still be a major part of the Bulldog Family as a teacher."
Worrell went 219-122 overall in his 13 seasons as King's Fork Head Coach. This past season's team finished 14-9 overall, falling to a Deep Creek team they had beaten twice in the regular season by a count of 78-75 in the Conference 17 Tournament semifinals.
Matthew Hatfield serves as Publisher for VirginiaPreps.com, part of the Rivals.com Network, and is a staff writer for Tar Heel Illustrated. Check out Hatfield’s Twitter page for more sports related updates, and you can also read his work in the Suffolk News Herald. To contact Matthew, please e-mail hatfieldsports2k4@yahoo.com, and don’t forget to listen to him every Saturday at 10AM on ESPN Radio 94.1.
