Yerrick Stoneman talks Ridge View tenure, GG Jackson and his first year at Oak Hill
Yerrick Stoneman led the Ridge View High School boys basketball team to four state championships during six seasons as head coach.
Stoneman announced in February that he was leaving to take over the national powerhouse Oak Hill Academy program. He was an assistant there under hall of fame coach Steve Smith, who retired last year.
Stoneman was back at Ridge View this week with his Oak Hill team to play in the 2022 Bash high school basketball showcase. Oak Hill also will play in the Chick-fil-A Classic later this month at River Bluff High School.
The State caught up with Stoneman to discuss his first season at Oak Hill.
Lou Bezjak: What were your emotions, coming back here to Ridge View and playing your former team?
Yerrick Stoneman: It was good to see some familiar faces and see some of the guys I coached the last two or three years. It’s good to see they are playing hard for coach (Joshua) Staley.
LB: Many of your former players were here tonight. What was it like to see them again?
YS: It’s special. GG Jackson was here. Ja’Von Benson, Patrick Jenkins and Jordan Smith were here. We had a bunch of them here. It is not necessarily the championships that mean a lot to me but the family atmosphere that we built here. It was a lot of time that we spent together. To me, it is special to be back and see them. I’m only three hours away so it is not too bad.
LB: You mentioned GG Jackson. What have you been able to see in his game during his freshman season at South Carolina, and what advice do you have for him?
YS: My advice to him is to continue to play hard. You can’t have possessions off where you don’t play hard, especially in the SEC which is coming up. Some of the great things I have been able to see is that he continues to get better and better on the perimeter. I think coach Lamont Paris is doing a good job coaching that team. I have probably watched six games already on ESPN Plus. I had to get that because of GG.
LB: What has been the biggest transition for you?
YS: The competition. Within our conference, we’ve got 10 teams and six or seven are ranked nationally. The biggest thing is to make sure our guys are prepared every game. You don’t have a day off in the conference.
LB: How different is it now at Oak Hill than when you were there the first time at Oak Hill. There weren’t a lot of these teams, the basketball academies 15 or 20 years ago?
YS: First time around, there were only about two or three of us teams. Now it is 20 or 25 different ones. In our conference, we’ve got 10 and they are going to add two more. Different thing is, I have to recruit now. We are a boarding school and have been recruiting general students for 145 years. But on the basketball side, we had to hit the recruiting trail and bring in some new guys. We got 14 new players and they are all trying to figure out each other and learn the system. Some of them aren’t playing as much as they want, but it is preparing them for the college level.
LB: What is the toughest thing about recruiting?
YS: The toughest maybe is our location. (Oak Hill is located in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia, which has a population of 1,226.) But I look as that as a positive. You get away from distractions and and focus on two things that mean most: basketball and academics.
