NEW ULM — Brian Batt, who had been an assistant coach under Dan Reinhart for four years, is the new head coach for the New Ulm girls’ basketball team. Batt takes over for Reinhart, who resigned after last season.

“I am very excited,” said Batt, who works for the New Ulm Parks and Recreation Department. “Coach Reinhart has done a lot of positive things for the program in the past years to help build it up and I am just looking forward to continue to build on what he has done. We are returning a lot of good players next year and we have some good, young players coming up. We have a good foundation to be competitive here for the next several years.”

Batt has earned his stripes in basketball coaching in New Ulm in the youth programs and AAU. Reinhart said that Batt will do a good job with the team.

“He is very knowledgeable and a great practice coach,” Reinhart said. “The kids are comfortable with him, they respect him and they will move forward. He has coached a lot in the summer in Kory [Kettner’s] program and he is a student of the game.”

Batt, who will be assisted by Dan Horsmon, said that he still has a spot or two to fill on his coaching staff.

“Coach Reinhart said that he is going to come back and coach at the seventh-grade program so that will be a big help,” Batt said. “But as far as filling out the [coaching] staff, I think that we are going to wait until the school year starts.”

Batt said that he has already been working with the players in the summer programs as they have already played in two tournaments.

“We are also playing league games and have some practices lined up and we have things to take us through the end of July,” he said. “Then after that I cannot have contact with them until the season starts again.”

Batt said that there will not be a lot of changes from the way Reinhart ran the program. But when a new coach comes in, he or she likes to add a few new wrinkles into things, especially defensively.

“They had a lot of success with the system that they used this past few years,” Batt said. “They used the press and certain defenses. So for me it is important to build on that and keep doing that. But there are always some wrinkles that he can put it — maybe a different defense — because there is a lot of scouting that gets done now. If you stick with the same thing, teams start to figure out a way to beat you and then other teams copy that. What I want to do is add a few more wrinkles, especially on defense, where we can change things up and get more fastbreak opportunities because we are quick.

“We want to make teams we play very uncomfortable when they have the ball. The girls run around a lot in our system — we do a lot of trapping and trying to get steals and turn them into fastbreak points. We are not going to slow down — it is going to be up tempo and sometimes it may look chaotic — but it is the style we are used to playing. That is what we do best.”