Haralson looks to build Lady Rattlers into district contender

New head coach Cooper Haralson will take over the Lady Rattler basketball program going into the 2024-2025 season.

After being an assistant coach for the past two seasons, Haralson is ready to lead the Lady Rattlers.

“I am excited about the opportunity,” Haralson said. “I’ve been the head coach before at a couple of places, but I’ve been a part of the girls basketball program for a couple of years now. I’ve built really good relationships, understand the girls and what they need. I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of the program and have the opportunity to lead the program along with Coach Winroe and Coach Fennell.”

Haralson was previously at Luling High School as the head coach of the boys' basketball team.

Before taking the job at Luling, Haralson was ready to lead the program.

“They asked me if I wanted to be a head coach, and I said absolutely,” Haralson said. “At the time, I didn’t know what I knew, but I did know that I was good at leading young men. So I took over in that second year and was the head coach for five years.”

Haralson led the Eagles to multiple playoff appearances before Luling won their first district championship and playoff game for the first time in 20 years in his final season.

“Watching those kids grow up and build that program into what it became [was special,]” Haralson said. “I will never forget the night we won the district championship. As soon as the buzzer went off, I stopped and didn’t celebrate. I just watched the kids celebrate and the excitement I saw on their faces for all the hard work they put in coming into fruition.”

Haralson made his first stop in San Marcos becoming an assistant coach for the boys basketball team before returning home to Wolfe City.

Becoming the head boys' basketball coach, Haralson led the team to the playoffs in his only season before returning to San Marcos.

“Coach Walsh was gracious enough to bring us right back,” Haralson said. “This is a place we love and care about [while] feeling comfortable coming right back into.”

This time Haralson was now the assistant coach for the Lady Rattler basketball team, which he has been for the last couple of seasons.

Even though he was coaching the same sport, Haralson did notice the difference in coaching girls basketball, more specifically coaching the San Marcos team.

“It was the first time for me that I was coaching specifically girls,” Haralson said. “Basketball is basketball, but coaching girls is a little bit different. The thing I love about coaching the [San Marcos] girls is that you ask them to do something, they do it to the best of their ability. I’m not saying that the boys won’t do that, it was just something I realized in our girls. If you trust and believe in them, they are willing to do anything you trust them to do.”

San Marcos is coming off a 20-12 regular season where the Lady Rattlers finished in fourth place in a tough District 27. The Lady Rattlers fell to the San Antonio Clark Cougars in the Bi-District round of the playoffs.

An element Haralson wants to improve for the Lady Rattlers is their ability to run the fast break offense.

“I want to get the girls running in transition more,” Haralson said. “That is something we have worked on in the past few weeks. I believe that the more points we score in transition, the more stress we can put on [opposing] defenses in transition and the better off we can be. It would also mean we would set up less half court offense and get a high percentage of shots in transition.”

With the Lady Rattlers returning seven players, Haralson noticed how the group’s belief in one another has become stronger throughout the past season.

“It’s how they started to come together,” Haralson said. “They believe in each other and have a common goal. We had them create goals for all the returning players and come up with quotes which will serve as constant reminders when they go through adversity.”

A common goal the Lady Rattlers have is wanting to be better both on the court and off the court with the major one being competing and winning the district championship.

“A lot of the goals are very similar in what they want to accomplish,” Haralson said. “Winning more games, winning districts, having better practices and being present. Their team goals speak to the same things and to me it speaks on what they want to accomplish. At the end of the day, we want to be the hardest working team out there no matter if the other team is bigger, faster or stronger. We are going to out work anybody we play against. The bigger goal is to be one of those teams that everyone in Central Texas talks about and be a perennial playoff team that is not a three or four seed but a district champ every year.”

It is also a goal Haralson believes is possible.

“The first day at practice the day I took over, I told them that I believe we have the talent to district next year,” Haralson said. “I really do. With the people that we have coming back and the way we competed last year, I understand where we fell short and what we need to do to achieve the bigger goal of winning a district title and making a deep run into the playoffs.”

San Marcos will play in the TABC Showcase June 13-15 in Bryan-College Station.

cmcwilliams @sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc