Central High School’s Coach Lett stepping down, moving on

MANCHESTER, NH – It’s hard to leave the place where you did all of your growing up, and most of your  growing older and wiser.

But Sudi Lett has felt the pull for a while now, to other places and new challenges. As basketball season winds down at Central High School Lett, who serves as boys varsity basketball head coach, has come to a crossroad and is taking a sharp left turn, toward something different.

Since 2018 he’s been passing along all he knows about the game to his student athletes while chasing a personal goal of being the first Black coach to win a NH high school state basketball championship.

That was not to be, at least not this time around.

“Seven years later, I find myself in a place where there are other things in my life that I’m focused on, like being the best dad I can be, the best partner I can be. I’m stepping down because I’m a different person than I was when I started,” says Lett.

After Tuesday night’s Senior Night at Central he will begin the process in earnest of packing up all the stuff and all the memories that go with it. Next month Lett is leaving the place he’s called home for more than 30 years along with his wife, educator Dr. Alicia Robinson, and their two little ones, Shaka and Ashanti. They are looking to move to the midwest for new opportunities in a community that feels more “culturally relevant” in these uncertain times.

He is also leaving his post at Granite State Organizing Project, where he has been Youth and Education Coordinator and leads the Youth Organizers United program, which brings students together after school to get them active and engaged in the community – and which had everything to do with the district launching its first-ever African American studies program, which finally got started in February of 2024.

And for the past several years he has been a coordinator for the annual We Are One Festival.

Lett admits he’s a little apprehensive about the future of all of the programs and initiatives he’s been a part of, which have served a vital function in the city – particularly for students coming from other countries and cultures.

From Bishop Elite to Central High

Central’s record this season – 3 wins, 14 losses – wasn’t the best or worst in their division, but it’s not the note Lett wanted to end his coaching career on here. Now he wants to make way for the next coach who can devote the time and attention to the players that they need to improve and excel. “I’m not an excuse guy, or a blame guy. I’m gonna take all the responsibility for how the season went,” says Lett.

He is also taking a last look at it all through a longer lens – celebrating seven years coaching at his alma mater, where the lessons he learned both on the court and off have made him into the person he is today – strong, resolute, ready.

“Central is in a good spot right now. We’ve got a lot of young talent. Our freshman team went to the championship, our JV team is gonna finish, like, 9 and 8, or over 500. Our varsity team, we got smacked around this year but we got a ton of sophomores who had to play heavy minutes and next year you’re hoping that will pay off,” Lett says.

“I’m doing what I hope someone would do, which is get out of the way so that they can win. They need someone who has more time, more energy and more interest,” Lett says.’It’s time. I’m ready to pass the torch.”

Individual player development has always been at the heart of his coaching philosophy, something he spent years fine-tuning through his work coaching community basketball clinics and a program he is so proud of,  known as Bishop Elite – or just The Bishop, to those who’ve come through – hundreds of aspiring basketball players, many who went on to success playing high school and college basketball – including the freshman coach he just hired and one of his assistant coaches.

Also among those who came through is Wenyen Gabriel – who arrived in Manchester a tall skinny elementary school kid and son of Sudanese refugees who’d never held a basketball before. With Lett and other coaches as his mentors Gabriel excelled, rising to success for several years in the NBA, playing for his home country of South Sudan in the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup and a chance to play in the 2024 Paris Olympics.

And he forged a lasting friendship with Lett that continues to this day. Lett acknowledges the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of finding yourself on the coaching end of a talent like Gabriel.  It has been a “pinch-me” moment in the highlights reel of his coaching career – so far, just one of the hundreds of kids Lett has had the pleasure of mentoring over the years.

He doesn’t know exactly what is waiting for him on the path ahead, but he is ready for it. Possibly a teaching job, and hopefully a community with a basketball program where he can take his own kids for some fun and skills  – and maybe just be the dad for a time, cheering them on from the bleachers.

“Will I coach again? Probably. I’m not going to do anything spectacular –maybe teach some high school math, maybe get some more education and become a principal some day. The thing that’s changing for me is I’ll be in a new place with new people, but I’ll still be me,” Lett says.

During a recent speaking engagement at Saint Anselm College, Lett addressed the room of mostly students gathered for a Martin Luther King Jr. Day dinner celebration, and said this:

“It really takes courage to do the right thing. Doing the right thing can bankrupt you. Doing the right thing can have people destroy your reputation. Doing the right thing can ostracize you from family. Doing the right thing can take away a lot of the protection and a lot of the comfort that we have. But I’m here to tell you all something that you all know, doing the right thing is how we got to this room today.”

He won’t waste any more time dwelling on some of the things that, over the years, landed as trauma. He is over having to prove himself worthy, being told he’s not “enough,” and ready to raise his family in a place – and at this particular time – where “diversity, equity and inclusion” is not a threat to anyone but just a way of life.

And so in leaving the city that raised him to be the man he has become – Lett is ready to do the right thing by himself and his young family – and pass the baton to the next coach and mentor.

“I’m sad to be leaving, especially this season, with so many losses, but I’m happy – happy for the future,” says Lett.