Two years after bringing Plano East the first state title in a team sport in school history, highly successful boys basketball coach Matt Wester is leaving Plano East to become a varsity assistant and the head junior varsity coach at Lake Highlands.
Advertisement
Wester said it was a family decision, as he will have two children attending Lake Highlands next school year and it will allow him to coach his older son Levi, either on the varsity or JV. It will make quite a coaching duo at Lake Highlands, as the head coach there, Joe Duffield, won the Class 6A state title in 2023, one year before Wester did at Plano East.
“It was a long decision, with lots of prayer,” Wester said. “Ultimately it was a family decision. It was one that was 20 years in the making. I live in Lake Highlands, we moved here 20 years ago, and I started competing against Duffield 20 years ago, and I’ve known him since we were both freshman coaches.
“I just felt it was the right move at the right time. It was a pretty easy decision and it was a very hard execution. Actually telling the kids I’m not coming back and actually hugging them and saying goodbye was really, really hard. But the decision to be around my kids a little bit more while I still get a chance to be their dad in our house was a pretty easy decision.”
Wester was at Plano East for 14 years, including eight as the head coach, and this season’s team went 27-8 and lost in the first round of the playoffs. Plano East assistant coach Michael Godwin, who was at Plano East the entire time Wester was the head coach, has been named the school’s interim head coach.
Advertisement
Wester’s Plano East team lost to Lake Highlands in the second round of the playoffs in 2023, then came back the next year and went 40-0, beating Round Rock Stony Point 53-41 in the 6A state championship game. DJ Hall was the MVP of the state title game. It is families like his that Wester will miss.
“What I’m going to miss most about Plano East is the families,” Wester said. “I’ve been there long enough that the kids I’m leaving, I feel like I’m leaving their big brother, who I coached, them who I’m still coaching, and their younger brothers that I was looking forward to coaching, and then their parents that I know so well. DJ Hall was our best player in 2024 and 2025, and his younger brother is going to be a senior next year and his dad is a friend, and his youngest brother will be in the Plano East middle school program next year. It was much harder than leaving a kid or a few kids. It was leaving those families.”
This will be Wester’s first time to be a JV coach since he was at Garland Naaman Forest in the 2011-12 season. He was also a varsity assistant that year, and Naaman Forest made it all the way to the state semifinals.
“I’m very proud of what we did at East,” Wester said. “The team that won state, it really felt like that was the way high school basketball should be. Everything was right about that. The timing, the kids, the families, it was just perfect. In a lot of ways, this feels similar. Coaching and education is about relationships, but it feels like this decision was 20 years in the making and it just kind of came together at the right time and the right way. I’m hopeful for big things at Lake Highlands.”
Advertisement
Star Local Media was the first to report the news of Wester’s departure from Plano East.
Subscribe