City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin) &
Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21)
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Jason Ritter has stepped down from the head boys' basketball coaching position at Downingtown West, he informed his team on Thursday.

In an email sent to CoBL, Ritter cited his family as the primary motivation behind his resignation after five years coaching the Whippets.

"With two very young kids at home, I need to be in two places at once," he wrote. "Something had to give."

In a text to CoBL, he called it a "tough (yet easy) decision."

Ritter, who's 34 years old, and his wife Leslie have two young daughters, Ellie (three) and Carson (10 months).

“When my daughter was born in May, now we had two kids so we said we’d give it the year and see how it went with having two kids,” Ritter said. “It was just too much on my wife to raise two kids alone during the winter months.”

When he’s not working with the Whippet basketball team, Ritter is a teacher at Penncrest High School during the day.

“I commute every day, I leave my house for work at 6:30 and I’m out four nights a week, my kids are asleep when I get up and they are asleep when I get home,” he said. “I don’t see them four days a week so that ultimately was the first and last reason I gave.”

He led the Whippets to a 23-5 season this past year, though their campaign ended unexpectedly early with losses to Conestoga and Academy Park in the district playoffs and play-backs.

“Toward the end of the year I was kind of decided I was going to resign, but then the way we ended, I was thinking about taking one more shot at it,” he said. “So, I was kind of holding off resigning, but it felt like the right time right now.”

The year prior, Downingtown West went 24-6, winning its first Ches-Mont League championship since 2008 and reaching the first round of the PIAA Class AAAA state tournament before losing to eventual champs Roman Catholic.

With all that success in the rear-view mirror, Ritter isn’t the only one leaving the Whippets’ program after having made an undeniable impact. Ryan Betley (Penn), Josh Warren (Cornell) and Dom Guerrera (West Chester)  were all a huge part of helping Ritter build the program from a team that won 11 games each of his first two years into one of the best in District 1 this past season.

Those seniors, who have each started since their sophomore years, were quite the last senior class for Ritter to coach at Downingtown West.

“You’re always going to leave a senior class, whenever you walk away there’s always going to be a senior class that you go out with, and those guys I’ve been very close with, especially them being three-year starters over the years,” he said. “But I like the sophomores, juniors, and freshmen coming up, we still have a lot of talent, I think we can certainly compete for a league championship in very good hands.”

Rising seniors like George Gordon, Matt Carson, Wayne Anderson, and Pat Kennedy, who all saw substantial playing time this year--particularly Gordon, a potential Division-I prospect--will be leading the Whippets with a brand new face patrolling the sidelines at West’s Wagner Gymnasium.  

Whoever that replacement will be is yet to be decided, but Ritter is confident that the family he’s developed at Downingtown West--although it can’t top the one he’s got waiting at home each night--will be ready to perform under the next hire.

“I have no idea (who the next coach will be),” Ritter said. “Whoever that person is, he’s coming into a lot of talented players who are ready to win.”