BELL BUCKLE, Tenn. – The Cascade Champions officially announced their hiring of Douglas Worsley as the new head coach of the boys’ basketball program on Friday.

Worsley, who will begin his 30th season coaching high basketball in the fall, replaces Chris Lawson, who moved on to Middle Tennessee Christian School in Murfreesboro back in April. Cascade will be Worsley’s seventh coaching stop. He began his career at Fairview Academy for six seasons – four as an assistant coach before getting the head coaching position for the final two years – and then took the head coaching job at Tri-Cities Christian for the next four seasons. He then moved to Anniston, AL. for two years as the head man at Faith Christian before spending the next three seasons as the head coach of Sycamore High in Cheatham County. In 2010, he moved to Westcreek, and then accepted the position to coach Central Magnet where he stayed for the past 11 years, finishing his tenure for the Tigers with a 169-169 record. 

“I had not really looked into leaving Central Magnet because my kids were here – my daughter is now at UT Southern for Cross Country and my son was a senior this year – and I have been pretty happy there without any issues, but the idea of starting a new adventure, something new in your life to challenge yourself…coaching is always a challenge, but sometimes you have to stir it up a little bit and challenge yourself some more. I feel like, why not now?” he said.

“The process started a few weeks ago,” Worsley explained. “I know Coach Lawson, he and I talk – of course we scheduled each other last year – and we were trying to back playing teams around us pretty consistently after COVID. Cascade has great gates, great crowds, and the competition is pretty good, so we were trying to do that again. I knew he was leaving, so I asked him who was replacing him and he said he had no idea. When the job came available, Chris didn’t know who they were going with, but he encouraged me to take a look at it. It happened pretty quickly, the timing ended up being just right, and everything worked out.

After leading Central Magnet to a 26-win season and a two-point Class AAA Sectional loss at Chester County in 2022-23,Worsley finished 6-24 in 2024-25, marking just the third losing season in 14 years at the helm of the Tigers. Now, he looks forward to a fresh start in Bell Buckle, and he sees a strong foundation to continue building on with the Champions.

“Casade already has a reputation of a team that plays hard,” he said. “As far as styles go, we will obviously adapt a little to the talent, but for me, my DNA is tough man-to-man defense and making it really tough – physically and mentally grind on teams – so we’ll have to develop some depth for that. As far as offense goes, I’ve adapted and changed over the years. We would love to play fast – we want to be exciting and entertaining – but we’ll be a defensive team first and be the type of team that people are going to know going in that it’ll be a long night and a tough game.”

“For me going into next season, we’re gonna compete, we have to compete at a high level, and we have to find our identity.”