NEW ULM — Zach Kaiser is the new head boys basketball coach at New Ulm Cathedral.

He replaces Alan Woitas, who stepped down after 12 years as the Greyhounds head coach.

“Zach has been a coach in our program at the Junior High level for two years and at the C-squad level for two years,” Woitas, who is the Activities Director at New Ulm Cathedral said. “He was previously the head boys basketball coach at Menahga High School for two years before moving to New Ulm. We look forward to Zach leading our boys basketball program and we know that he will excel in that role.”

Kaiser, who will be a high school physical education teacher at Cathedral after having taught social studies at Cathedral, said that he is excited to get started.

“We will have a young team this coming season with one returning starter — we lost a lot of seniors from last year — so it will be a new page for the program and for everybody,” he said.

“Alan did a great job for the decade that he was head coach and he laid a nice foundation for me to come in and not have to make to many changes cultural-wise.”

Kaiser, a Henning High School graduate, started his coaching career as a volunteer ninth-grade basketball coach at Moorhead High School when he was in college at Minnesota State-Moorhead.

“I was always interested in coaching and that was a good way to get my feet wet and see how I would fare,” he said.

Kaiser’s first job teaching was at Clinton-Graceville-Beardsley where he taught and coached for a year as an assistant basketball coach before leaving for Menahga High School.

“I was the C-squad coach for two years before I took the head coaching job for two years before my family and I moved to New Um,” he said. “I was the seventh- and eighth-grade coach at Cathedral for two years and then the C-squad coach for two years.”

Each coach likes to put his brand on a team and Kaiser believes that is the biggest question going forward and what the Greyhounds identity will be.

“We are going to be so young and our talent is not going to be at the level that it needs to be for varsity basketball team-wise,” Kaiser said. “We have some talented kids, but they do not have a lot of varsity experience. So we are going to do everything that we can to be disruptive — we are going to be pushing the ball offensively — we are going to try to cause turnovers and havoc defensively.

“We have a lot of players, so I will not know even a couple of games into next season who is cut out for varsity ball. We are going to get a lot of players in without varsity experience in early.”

Kaiser said that his team will also be small size-wise.

“So we are going to look to push pace on offense and create turnovers on defense,” he said. “That is going to be our best shot — we are not going to out-size anybody. We have kids who can shoot the ball, but we want to attack the basket and make things as easy for ourselves offensively as we can.

“We will struggle on the boards and being out-sized, but hopefully we get it instilled in the kids minds that they need to out-work everybody that they play. You can always play defense and hustle and out-work every team you play — you can get the 50-50 balls. We are going to have to do that consistently to be successful. And defensively, myself and my assistant [Reese Klawitter], feel that we are going to have to hold teams to between 55 and 60 points a game to give us a shot to win games, but we feel that we can do that.”