Two intriguing names have emerged as Trinity searches for its next girls basketball coach - Bob Miles and Laura Montecalvo.
At least two sources have indicated Miles is interested and the feeling should be mutual. It makes sense. Miles teaches at Trinity and he built Fort Cherry into a program which contended for WPIAL and PIAA titles. Plus, his work has earned respect at a state-wide level as evidenced by his selection as the Class A Coach of the Year in 2011. Miles is a three-time winner of the Tri-County Athletic Director Coaches Association Girls Basketball Coach of the Year. His teams are known for unselfish, disciplined and physical play.
Fort Cherry is moving to Class AA for at least the next two seasons and was placed in a section with Seton-La Salle and Bishop Canevin. The Rangers will still be a solid team the next two years, but there is a reported drop-off in talent after the sophomore class graduates.
If Miles, who lives in the Fort Cherry district, remains interested, consider him the top candidate.
Montecalvo was a standout athlete while at Wash High and has strong interest in becoming a head coach. She is also certified as a guidance counselor, and Trinity may have an opening in guidance for the upcoming school year.
* It's late May and, finally, every local high school has a varsity football coach. Bentworth, Burgettstown, Charleroi, Jefferson-Morgan, McGuffey, Trinity and Waynesburg all enter the 2012 with new coaches.
Bentworth and Charleroi moved quickly with their hires. McGuffey and Waynesburg made splash hires. Trinity conducted an extensive search. Burgettstown moved extremely quick with an in-house candidate in Terry Havelka, also the Blue Devils wrestling coach, following Matt Taylor's departure to Keystone Oaks. Jefferson-Morgan's search was extraordinarily long, the longest I can remember at the high school level.
* The WPIAL individual track championships are today, and the Washington-Greene region should produce a strong share of gold medalists. It's been a strong year for track.
* Speaking of track, the Washington boys team has a legitimate chance to win the Class AA team title at the state meet next weekend.
The Prexies, who turned in one of the most dominant dual meet seasons in WPIAL history, have everything needed to win a state title.
Dustin Fuller has the ability to win multiple individual championships. The 400 and 1,600 relay teams should medal. Other individual medals could come from a long list of athletes including Josh Wise, Darius Spinks, Shai McKenzie, West Jones, Austin Fuller and Joe Phillips. It's a special group.
* McKenzie's showing this track season is solidifying his status as a Division I football prospect. Only a sophomore, McKenzie is running sub-11 seconds in the 100-meter dash and is hearing from a host of Division I football programs from the Big Ten, Big East and ACC.
McKenzie and Monessen's Justice Rawlins are already two of the WPIAL's most sought-after prospects in the Class of 2014. Rawlins already has offers from Pitt and Rutgers, with WVU showing significant interest.
* Got to agree with Mike White from the Post-Gazette, who stated the WPIAL baseball playoffs need tweaked on his blog, Varsity Blog.
The brackets are set so teams with first-round byes can pitch their ace throughout the remainder of the playoffs beginning in the quarterfinals. It takes a lot of intrigue away from the postseason. And cramming the quarterfinals games one day after the first-round games pretty much eliminated any chance for upsets.
* That stated, the WPIAL Class A baseball semifinal between undefeated California and one-loss Bentworth has to be the most anticipated postseason game between a pair of local teams since Peters Township and Canon-McMillan met in the 2008 PIAA Class AAAA quarterfinals.
The two teams play Monday night at Washington & Jefferson's Ross Memorial Park. The game is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.
* Chartiers-Houston baseball was woefully underseeded. The Bucs were far better than No. 9 in Class A.
* Peters Township junior Olivia Roberson is already a two-time PIAA champion as a key member of the Indians' girls soccer team. An all-state player her junior year, Roberson recently accepted a scholarship offer from Duquesne University.
8 comments:
You mentioned the new football coaches, what you failed to mention was what a joke Trinity and Jeff Morgan hires were. Trinity hires a young guy with an ounce of background compared to MANY of the candidates and Jeff Morgan hired a guy with NO background. He was an assistant coach for 5 years.... that's it!! Never a coordinator, never coached a play-off game, and his first attempt at a game plan will be against Carmichaels in their 1st game, yet they chose him over Jan Haiden who has been coaching forever... and doing it well I might add. I remember when being a head coach carried a level of respect in the community, that is definitely not the case anymore. JM and Trinity have jokes for coaches now and their programs will soon match them.
I generally refrain from calling coaching hires jokes as it is difficult to critique a coach before he's coached a game. All head coaches had a first game at some point.
Ok, fair enough, the PROCESS leading to the hires was a joke. It cannot be justified. By the way, this is a majority consensus, I am not alone by a long shot.
I am surprised that someone who obviously takes football so seriously, would not have looked harder into the backround of the new JM head coach. I also wonder how your limited knowledge of these coaches would give you any idea you know more about football, have you coached? have you played?, have you spent the last twenty-four years studying the game, learning what works and the importance of teaching these young men on your team, the importance of team work,fair play, determination? Have you? Lets give both these young men a shot. Maybe they can not only bring a winning season but values and ethics to the schools they are associated with. B. Miller
24 years studying the game? That would mean these two coaches were prodigies in kindergarten. And EVERYBODY has limited knowledge of these coaches because they have never accomplished anything! I hope your last statement isn't suggesting that Haiden didn't teach all the things you are listing. He was very loyal to that school and got everything out of his players. Ryan(or should I say B. Miller?) got the job by default. Period. Nobody else applied because of the witch hunt on Haiden. There will be very few rooting for a coach that slithered into a job this way.
I apologize B. Miller. I have done some research and found I didn't have all of Ryan's background. He also has 1 year experience as an assistant coach in the Avella Youth Program! I take back all the negative statements above for jumping the gun before I knew he spent a year in the vastly successful Avella football program.
I was in some classes with Laura Montecalvo at Cal U.
Post a Comment