It’s been eight years since a Salem High girls basketball team has qualified for the state tournament — and over a decade (2012) since they picked up a postseason win.
Newly hired head coach David Kazadi is hoping to change that.
The 28-year-old Kazadi graduated from Salem High in 2014, playing for head coach Tom Doyle on the boys varsity squad. His passion for the sport runs deep, and after serving as the Witches’ girls JV coach a year ago he’s eager and ready to make the leap to varsity.
“We’re extremely excited to announce David as our next girls basketball coach,” said Salem High athletic director Reilly Christie. “David is an alum that spent time on our girls basketball staff last year and has experience as a skills coach for UMass Lowell. He was the most prepared and qualified candidate. We’re looking forward to the energy, passion and basketball knowledge that David will bring to our program.”
For Kazadi, the decision to apply for the varsity coaching position was a no-brainer.
“Last year was my first year coaching at the high school as the JV coach and we had pretty small numbers,” admitted Kazadi. “But I loved it, and once I saw the position was open (for varsity) there was no hesitation on my part. I’m excited to get started.”
Following his graduation from Salem High, Kazadi attended UMass Lowell and played for the school’s high-level club basketball team. He helped them capture their first-ever national championship, ultimately graduating with a degree in economics in 2020.
By day, Kazadi works as an accountant and has settled back in Salem. During all other hours you can likely find him with a basketball in his hand or studying the game diligently as he prepares for the upcoming campaign.
Tryouts at Salem High won’t begin until the Monday after Thanksgiving, but Kazadi has already organized some pick-up runs to help the girls gear up for the winter.
“I started with some open gyms and have been running those on Mondays and Fridays just to get them back into the swing of things a little bit,” said Kazadi. “I talked to some of the girls and they told me they hadn’t touched a basketball all summer, so we plan to keep those open gyms going leading up to tryouts.
“Numbers-wise it’s already looking pretty good,” he added. “A lot of our returning players have a lot of good friends at school that they’re going to try to recruit onto the team. Last year we struggled with the numbers … really since COVID we have … so we’re still trying to build that back up and hopefully this year it’ll be a little different.”
Kazadi said one of his main focuses will come on the defensive end, where he plans to implement a dedicated zone defense.
“I hope to improve on some things I saw last year. I feel like we lacked on defense, so I’ll try to improve in that area first,” said Kazadi. “We struggled last year because we put in a lot of different defenses, so I want to keep it as simple as possible and give us one set defense and focus on that. A lot of teams pressed us last year, too, and we struggled with that. So we need to be able to beat the press; that’s my top two things right now.”
The Witches will certainly benefit from some of Kazadi’s proven players on JV that will be moving up the ranks this season. Salem Academy transfer Kianny Mirabel-Nunez will join the mix as well after averaging better than 13 points and nearly six rebounds per game with the Navigators last winter.
Isvely Severino, who led the Witches in rebounding last season and shines for the SHS volleyball team, is another piece Kazadi said will be instrumental to their success.
“She’s super tall, had a lot of blocks last year,” said Kazadi. “She still has a lot to learn and I’ll do whatever it takes to have her excel this year.”
Kazadi also mentioned Destiny Bennett, a senior point guard with, according to Kazadi, “great control and feel for the game.”
“I truly look forward to working with young athletes. The goal is to improve every day and get better each game,” said Kazadi. “At the end of the day we want to be better than we were last year and continue to improve as a team.”
Contact Nick Giannino at NGiannino@Salemnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickGiannino_SN.