Madison coach stepping down

The Madison girls basketball team will head to a new conference next season with a new head coach.

Tedd Wagner has stepped down as the Blue Streaks’ head coach after a 14-10 season that saw his youthful team grown in leaps and bounds as the season progressed. Athletic Director John Dragas said the application process has begun to replace Wagner, who is heading back to coach is first love — track and field.

“There are a lot of reasons for me to come back (to basketball),” he said, naming off returning talent and a support network of parents and administrators. “I’m two years away from retiring as a teacher and now is the perfect time to go with us going into the Chagrin Valley Conference next year.

“I tell my assistants all the time, I’m proficient at basketball and I work hard at it. But I ran track at Miami. I’ve been involved with track since 1982. Going back to track is like throwing me right back into my ring.”

The 2022-23 Blue Streaks were written off as also-rans in the early going with a slow start. That proved to be a mistake, as Wagner and Co. grew as the season went on, knocked off defending champion North twice and pushed eventual league champion Riverside in a pair of Western Reserve Conference games.

The team was largely brand new from a year ago, but the growth of players such as Claire Wakim, Zoey Deligianis, Kearsten Woleben and others made the Blue Streaks a tough team to deal with as the year went on.

“If you look at it, Woleben started last year, but wasn’t a big scorer,” Wagner said. “Claire missed most of last year. Zoey, Autumn (Molnar) and (Alissa) Snider played JVs. We were very young. To come as far as we did was impressive. Once we beat North, it was like, ‘Wow, we could be pretty good,’ the switch flipped and we were off to the races.”

A teacher at Madison in math and AP calculus, Wagner said he is looking forward to the progression of the program under new leadership. He hopes assistant Heather Reho, a former standout at Fairport, get that opportunity.

“Heather has the respect of the girls and loves basketball,” he said. “She did all of our conditioning and weight room direction. The work we did in the weight room is a big reason for our success this season.”

Dragas said Madison will go through the proper process to find Wagner’s replacement, adding, “We have to post it and we’ll go from there. We’ll look at his staff first and gauge the interest and go from there.”

Dragas lauded the job Wagner did in his short tenure with the program.

“He really brought the program along quite a bit,” Dragas said. “The girls were a lot stronger and benefited from that work in the weight room. He took a holistic approach to it. I can’t be more proud of what he did bringing the program into the 2020s.”

Wagner said he told Dragas before the season that it was likely going to be his last year. He certainly went out on a high note.

Wagner joked about his departure.

“I’m old,” he said with a laugh. “It’s the right time to move on.”

Wagner