Forest Park hires hoops coach
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By Dave Fawcett
Published: April 14, 2008
Forest Park met both those conditions for Mallisham, who has accepted the school’s offer to become its new boys basketball coach.
For six years, Mallisham has made the daily commute from his home in Manassas to Heritage High School in Leesburg.
With traffic, that commute would routinely last an hour and 15 minutes each way. By coaching at Forest Park, Mallisham will only be 10 miles away from work.
“This job gives me what I want to do, but in my backyard,” Mallisham said.
After working as an assistant at Marymount University, Hayfield, Woodbridge and Westfield, Mallisham became Heritage’s first boys basketball coach when the school opened in 2002.
After winning only one game that first season, Mallisham led the Pride to five straight winning seasons.
Heritage has won the last three Group AA Dulles District regular-season titles and advanced to two Region II Tournaments.
The Pride’s best season was in 2005-06 when they went 23-4 overall, 15-0 in the district (the only team to ever go unbeaten in the history of the Dulles District) and finished ranked No. 5 in the Associated Press’ state poll before losing to Orange by one point in the regional semifinals.
This season, Heritage went 14-10 and lost to Handley in the first round of the regional tournament, 62-57.
“He has a lot of energy,” Forest Park activities director Jerry Mobley said. “From everybody we talked to, he’s a diligent worker and you see excitement in his eyes.”
Mobley said between 12 to 15 people applied for the position, but only eight were interviewed.
Mallisham, 40, is familiar with the Prince William County basketball scene.
He coached with Hylton boys basketball coach Barry Smith at Hayfield and worked with Freedom’s Ahmad Dorsett at Woodbridge.
He’s also scrimmaged teams like Stonewall Jackson and Woodbridge as well over the years and this season played in Potomac’s one-day tournament in January, losing to Hylton 70-54.
“I was happy where I was at, but after looking at what had been accomplished, I started thinking about what my next goal should be?” Mallisham said.
Mallisham replaces Kirby Overman, who stepped down after five seasons to become an assistant men’s basketball coach at Eastern Kentucky University.
With Old Dominion signee Chris Cooper out for the entire season after having knee surgery, the Bruins struggled this season, going 6-17 overall and 1-9 in the Group AAA Cardinal District.
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