Daniel Wright is known around St. Petersburg for producing winning basketball teams and delivering state championship titles. But his influence on people’s lives often begins years before they join his team at Lakewood High School, and last long after, when he helps them get to college, or when, years later, they send their children to learn from him.
And if you ask the legendary coach, he’ll tell you that his job is more about building character than it is about claiming victories.
Wright, 53, has taught physical education and coached the boy’s varsity team at Lakewood High for 30 years, after one year as the junior varsity coach. He ranks among the best of Florida state high school coaches with a career record of 699 wins and 253 losses. His teams have made seven trips to the state playoffs, and have won two state titles. He has earned a reputation with three decades of athletes and their parents as a successful and uncompromising coach.
But Wright has built a bigger team off the Lakewood court. For the past 22 years, he has volunteered and worked at the city’s Lake Vista Center, where he has coached and mentored hundreds of children growing up in the Greater Pinellas Point area. Wright works evenings in the center’s office and volunteers as a scorekeeper and referee for the youth basketball league.
So by the time freshmen try out for the Lakewood Spartans, many of them have known their new coach for most of their lives.
“As an athlete you know who coaches are, and you knew who Coach Wright was,” said former Spartan Dwight Latimore, 35, who was 10 years old when he first met Wright at the Lake Vista Center.
Getting to kids when they’re young has paid off for Wright at Lakewood.
“Anytime you can familiarize yourself with a group of people before they enter a program you benefit,” he said.
But he says the real reward is in the relationships that go on long after the season has ended: “It’s years later when those kids come back and tell you how you changed their lives or what you meant to them, how you kept them on track.”
Wright knows from personal experience how important those relationships can be. When he was a student at Southside Junior High School in St. Petersburg, he was shooting hoops one day on an outdoor court. Gibbs High School coach Fred Dyles spotted him, and encouraged him to try out for his team the following year.
Dyles became a role model for Wright, both on the court and off. Dyles’ involvement in the community inspired Wright to start working with youth programs when he moved back to St. Petersburg after graduating from Florida Southern College in Lakeland.
“He was respected and positive,” Wright said of Dyles. “He was an individual who gave back to his community and that’s what I wanted to do, too.”
Wright played basketball for two years at Martin College in Tennessee and for two years at Florida Southern, where he graduated with a degree in physical education. After college, Wright came home to St. Petersburg. He got a job teaching and coaching at Lakewood High, married his high school sweetheart, had two sons and never left. He has become known not just for the number of games he has won, but also for how he won them.
“He’s known in the city as the coach parents want their kids to play for, and it’s because he’s strict with discipline. He makes sure the kids go to class. He intervenes if there are problems with the kids in the classroom,” said Paul Morrison, whose youngest son plays basketball at Lakewood — the third of the Morrison boys to play for Wright.
Wright’s own two sons were part of his program. Edward, now 22, served as the Spartans’ team manager; he now studies law enforcement at Florida A&M University. Wright’s namesake, Daniel, is 35 and a chemist in Atlanta; he played on his father’s varsity squad for two years, and remembers how hard his father pushed players at practice.
Coach Wright would run his team through “suicide” drills; players would have 30 seconds to run from the baseline to the foul line and back, then to half court and back, then to the other foul line and back, and finally full court and back. As the players neared the end, Wright would speed up his counting to push them through the finish, his son said. If a player couldn’t finish in time, Wright would make him start over.
“He believes in winning,” Wright’s son said. “Sometimes that means he runs you to death.”
And he treated all players the same. Being a star — or being his son — earned no special favor from Coach Wright.
The younger Daniel Wright remembers spending time at the Lake Vista Center with his dad and growing up in his spotlight. When he was 7 years old and playing in a youth league game, he stole the ball from an opponent and headed for the other end of the court. He flubbed a dribble and bounced the ball out of bounds. Disappointed, he started whining to his dad. But in that setting, his dad was the coach, and said something he still thinks about today.
“He basically told me to man up,” Wright’s son said. “He didn’t take my whining. He said, ‘You have to practice if you want to be good. You gotta work hard if you want to beat these guys.’ He let me know that I’m not gonna be good just because he was my dad.”
The coaching lessons that Wright has passed along to 30 years of players go well beyond their performance on the court. His former players say he also pushes them to become responsible citizens who finish high school and continue onto college.
“He just expects a lot from us,” said Michael Morrison, who will be a senior at Lakewood next season, and plays power forward and center for the team. “He expects great grades. Not just over a 2.0. He expects great grades — college grades.”
And when a player makes the kind of grades needed for college, Wright is there with an assist.
Latimore is one of those who got a boost from Wright. He had played two years for St. Petersburg College, then a junior college, after graduating from Wright’s program at Lakewood High. One afternoon in 1991, when he was playing ball at the Lake Vista Center Wright stopped to chat about the game, and about life.
Then Wright mentioned that the coach at Palm Beach Atlantic University was looking for a solid rebounder. Days later the Palm Beach coach called Latimore and asked him to try out for his team. Latimore made the team and played two years in West Palm Beach. He’s now back at Lakewood, as coach of the junior varsity basketball squad.
“With Coach it’s an everyday thing, but for me it was very big,” Latimore said. “He didn’t have to do that, but if he didn’t, it’s possible I wouldn’t have played again.”
College coaches often contact Wright when they’re looking for a player. Wright doesn’t only promote his own players; if he knows someone from a rival team who would be a good match, he’ll tell the recruiter about him, Latimore said.
Parents like Paul Morrison notice Wright’s involvement with their children after high school too. Wright is helping Morrison’s second son Sean, 19, get in contact with basketball coaches overseas.
“He still stays involved even after they stop playing for him, whether it’s helping them find jobs or putting them in contact with college coaches,” Morrison said. “It’s not just about basketball, even though that’s how he’s known.”
That involvement is part of a continuum that often begins with the children at the Lake Vista Center.
“He’ll use his personal money to help kids that don’t have the money to participate in the programs (at Lake Vista),” said Morrison, who has known Wright for 20 years. “He will dip into his own pocket and pay for a kid that he may not even know very well.”
Wright himself doesn’t see any of his actions as anything special. He said he has been blessed in life, and is happy he can do what he loves and help people.
“A lot of people think I’m big stuff, but I hate to be singled out for doing things that I think we should all do for our community,” Wright said. “It’s not so much about winning games. It’s about giving back to the community.”
