{"id":280062,"date":"2026-05-05T18:30:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/280062\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T18:30:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T18:30:25","slug":"plano-east-state-champion-coach-wester-steps-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/280062\/","title":{"rendered":"Plano East state champion coach Wester steps down"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Plano East head boys basketball coach Matt Wester lifts the net in the air after the Panthers defeated Plano West 57-54 on Feb. 17. The Panthers finished as the co-champion of District 6-6A. Photo by Andy Redmond \/ C&amp;S Media<\/p>\n<p>By David Wolman<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/murphymonitor.com\/cdn-cgi\/l\/email-protection\" class=\"__cf_email__\" data-cfemail=\"a8dbd8c7dadcdbe8cbdbc5cdccc1c9dccdd0c9db86cbc7c5\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">[email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Two years after helping lead the Plano East boys basketball team to a 40-0 season and the first state championship in school history,\u00a0Matt Wester\u00a0announced May 5 that he is leaving the program to become a varsity assistant and head JV coach at\u00a0Lake Highlands High School.<\/p>\n<p>Wester formally submitted his resignation to the\u00a0Plano Independent School District\u00a0one week ago.<\/p>\n<p>He cited family reasons for his departure. <\/p>\n<p>Wester moved his family near Lake Highlands 20 years ago, and with one son competing in basketball and a daughter set to be a freshman later this year, he said the timing made sense to step away from Plano East, coach his son and be on the same campus as his daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was a family decision,\u201d Wester said. \u201cWhen the opportunity opened up, I felt like I had to pray about it. I am really proud of what we have done at Plano East, but also content with what we have accomplished. With only a couple of more years with the kids in the house, it felt like a great opportunity to coach them. It was an easy decision, but it was hard to execute.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Read the full story, stay informed, and support your local community newspaper. Subscribe to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/publisher1.etype.services\/Murphy-Monitor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Murphy Monitor<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plano East head boys basketball coach Matt Wester lifts the net in the air after the Panthers defeated&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-280062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}