Horace Willis, a staff member at Washington-Liberty High School for 28 years, recently was hired to be the head coach of the school’s girls varsity basketball team.
Williams — known to most as “Buck” — takes over for Maddy DeCou. She left after two seasons in the position to become an assistant coach on the staff at nearby Marymount University.
Under DeCou, the Washington-Liberty girls had a strong season in 2024-25, finishing second in the Liberty District tournament and compiling the squad’s best record in years at 17-9.
Willis is a 1991 graduate of Washington-Liberty (then Washington-Lee), where he was a standout athlete in basketball, football and track-and-field. After returning to the school as a staff member, Willis at various times has been a coach in three sports — basketball, football and track-and-field.
Willis was inducted into the W-L Athletic Hall of Fame in January 2020.
Since 2002, Willis has spent the winters as an assistant coach under Tony Bentley of the boys basketball team at Arlington’s Wakefield High School. So the move to lead the Washington-Liberty girls team took some by surprise.
“I’m very excited about this — and anxious,” Willis told ARLnow. “It took me a while to decide about the change, but I talked it over with my family and now I’m ready to go. I think I have something to offer, and the team is returning some good players. I have coached girls before, and this is an opportunity to see where things go.”
The Washington-Liberty girls squad had a strong season in 2024-25, finishing second in the Liberty District tournament and compiling its best record in years at 17-9.
Bentley, also an alumnus of W-L, said he supports Willis’ decision.
“Buck has so much to offer and is so well-known and liked. We will miss him and it will be strange not having him on our bench. He has always been with me. But he will do very well as W-L’s head coach,” Bentley said.
Top returning players for W-L for the 2025-26 season are expected to include sisters Eve and Anna Jungman, Kathryn Wagener, Catherine Hogans and Gabrielle Moglica.
