Who Am I?

Damon Moore just completed his third season and last season as Assistant Women's Basketball Coach at Lakeland Community College Lady Lakers Basketball Program. He will begin his 12th year in coaching at his alma mater, Cleveland State University, learning from one of the best coaches in the state, Kate Peterson-Abiad. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan, but has spent most of his life in Cleveland, Ohio where he is a 1990 graduate of Collinwood High School. Moore spent his first three years of high school living in Toronto Ontario, Canada where he was a three year starting center at Midland Avenue Collegiate Institute and garnered All-City Honors his junior year. Moore continued his academic career at Cleveland State University where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Education with an emphasis in Special Education in 1998. Coach Moore is currently working towards a master's degree in Education.

After completing his B.S. in 1998, he started his teaching and coaching career at Patrick Henry Middle School where he taught 6th-8th grade special education students. From the first day he stepped into the school, Moore began bugging then Athletic Director, the famed high school track coach, Louis Slapnik, about an opportunity to coach or help out at the school. “Coach Slap took me under his wing and I became a voluntary assistant coach with the boys program, where he mentored me on the basics of coaching and how to deal with kids at that age. He helped build the foundation of my coaching career,” says Moore. After the completion of the boys program that season, Moore became coach of the girl’s program in 1998. He still worked under Coach Slapnik for the next two years as a voluntary assistant. With the additional mentoring and intensive study, Coach Moore was able to build a dominate Girl’s program which resulted in several divisional titles and a City Championship with a team that went 15-0. Coach Moore ended his middle school coaching career in 2004, taking over the boy’s program and winning a divisional title and leading that team to the city championship where they became City Runners-Up.

Towards his climb up the coaching ladder, Coach Moore accepted the position of Girls Varsity Head Coach at his alma mater, Collinwood High School. Moore notes, “Although coaching high school was intimidating at first, I welcomed the challenges.” At this time he began noticing the politics that came with coaching urban high school basketball and the inequalities that prevented him from building a championship caliber team. “Reality set in and the honeymoon I experienced in middle school was over. I couldn’t understand why only 12-15 girls came out for the varsity and junior varsity team, fighting for gym time with the boy’s team and always getting the reduced practice time, lack of administration help and support, spending my own money on practice gear, basketballs, equipment, and other things needed for the team. After two seasons of dealing with that, I was on a mission to coach elsewhere and what awaited me was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Coach Moore came to Lakeland Community College in the summer of 2006. He fell in love with the campus immediately and was anxious to work at the “next level.” As he started his third season, he was finally able to implement several things into the program that has been successful to the overall play of the Lady Lakers, but knew more work was needed. “Our full court pressure defense, was recently put into play towards the end of the season and it worked pretty well, despite the limited time our team had to learn it. We also started a basic motion offense that has the chance to get better with time and hard work.”

Coach Moore is a young and dynamic individual. He brings a level of enthusiasm to the sideline and would like to develop and/or assist a successful program where the players can be proud of their accomplishments on the court and in the classroom. Along with laughter, hard work, and determination, Coach Moore’s energy and enthusiasm will aid in building any basketball program he is a part of into an eventual champion.