The Three Rivers women's basketball program has found a new assistant coach as Caleb Livingston was hired on to be on the bench with Alex Wiggs for the 2022-23 season.
Livingston will be entering his first season coaching at the college level after coaching high school and travel basketball.
"It's been a lot of fun making the transition, learning everything about the school and working in a nice facility," Livingston said. "I've known Coach Wiggs for about eight years now through recruiting the girls I've coached in high school and travel basketball. A lot of kids were on the successful teams he's had the last couple of years. So when the position opened up, we were talking about it, I was about to accept another college coaching position and Alex asked me about working for him and it was a no-brainer for me."
Some of the players Livingston has coached includes Myia Yelder, Chaylea Mosby and Kiley Bess.
"The thing that stood out to me about Coach Livingston is what he can bring to the table as far as recruiting," Wiggs said. "I've known him for almost a decade and I knew he'd be a great fit as an assistant coach."
It's no secret that Livingston will be joining a successful program that has only two losses in the past two seasons, both at the national tournament to the eventual champion.
"In the interview, I was asked how I can make this program better," Livingston said. "When they've gone 52-2 over the past two years, that's hard to do. Obviously, the end goal is to win a national championship. We want to get back to the national tournament and win it all.
“Obviously that's not our only goal, but one of the things Coach Wiggs has wanted for this program is to be the best."
Livingston was coaching at Nettleton High School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, where the girls basketball program won a state championship in 2020.
"I coached travel basketball for eight years and have sent a lot of kids to Division I schools and more to Division II all the way down to junior college. I felt like it was a good time to make the next step in my career,” Livingston said. “The one thing I can really bring to the table is the connections I have from all those years coaching high school and travel ball to help players move onto four-year school from Three Rivers."
Livingston is excited for the jump from high school to college basketball.
"The great thing about coaching college now is that my job is to focus on basketball all the time," Livingston said. "In high school, most coaches are also teachers during the day. But up here I can just focus on recruiting and winning ballgames. There are some other stuff that we have to do, but that's the main thing."
Livingston has been coaching for 11 years and was a student manager at Williams Baptist for the men's basketball team.
"When I was in college, I knew I wanted to get into coaching, but I never thought it would be on the women's side," Livingston said. "About seven years ago, I got a call asking if I was interested in helping coach a girls AAU program. It went from one team to about 20 teams in three years and the success snowballed since then. Had a bunch of kids from the Poplar Bluff area play in the summer months and that's how I met Coach Wiggs when he would come down to recruit as an assistant coach at the time for Three Rivers."
Livingston has already jumped right in arriving to the Three Rivers campus recently, but is looking forward to October and November when the college basketball season kicks off.
"We've got a few girls that live close by that have been coming in for summer workouts," Livingston said. "I've FaceTimed with the girls to say hello and get to know them a little bit before they all get here in August and we start practices."
Three Rivers will be looking to return to the NJCAA National Tournament after getting eliminated in the second round in 2022 and making it to the final four the previous season.
Robert Augsdorfer - Daily American Republic