CURWENSVILLE – Shane Pentz enters his second season as the head coach of the Curwensville Area High School boys basketball squad after posting a 4-17 mark in 2011-12.
The Golden Tide will return five letter winners this upcoming season. All five are juniors in Tanner Elensky, Brett Gardner, Kyle Johns, Alex Olson and Austin Jacobson. Elensky is a two time letter winner for the Tide.
All five returning lettermen will also be the starting five to kick off the 2012-13 campaign with Elensky having led Curwensville in scoring, steals and assists last year.
Gardner comes back as the team’s second leading scorer and three point leader from a year ago while Kyle Johns was second in team rebounding and third in points tallied.
The Tide’s leading rebounder is back in Jacobson who was also second in steals while classmate Olson had the second most steals and third most rebounds in 2011-12.
Pentz first talked about last year, his first as Tide head coach, “Last year we knew was going to be a learning experience for the team. We were very young and had very little varsity experience. That coupled with the fact that we only had nine players on the team made for a lot of playing time for everyone. We are trying to use the end of last season when we won three of our last five as a springboard for success this year.”
It should be noted that in the two losses out of those last five games the Tide played, one of them was at the buzzer.
The Tide will also utilize a bench with bigger numbers this year with seniors Marcus Stephenson and Adam Benamati leading the way while five other juniors may figure in the mix in Nate Kurtz, Nick London, Josh Shaffer, Jason Thorp and Justin Brooks.
Sophomores looking to mature and gain some varsity time are Harrison Bloom, Alex Hill, Dylan Davis, Trey Rauckhorst, Foster Cannon and Jonathon Miller.
Asked about pre-season practice Pentz responded with, “The boys have been working hard since practice has started. With having 18 players this year, practices are much more competitive since even returning players know that playing time isn’t guaranteed; it has to be earned in practice. Due to that, we are still looking every day in practice to see who will be in the varsity rotation.”
And as every coach, Pentz has expectations, “We feel we will be a much more athletic team this year. They are all a year older and you can see a much higher level of comfort with what we are trying to do. We also added quite a bit of height to our team as we have four players that are 6’ 3” or taller. Overall, I expect us to be much more competitive this year. We have set some goals as a team that I think are definitely reachable. We try and keep those goals just amongst the team, but they are working hard to get to where they need to be.”
Pentz closed with, “I’m really excited for the season to begin. I’m hoping the community will come out and support these kids and appreciate the hard work they put in each day.”
Curwensville will open the season on Friday December 7 at Clearfield (Editor’s Note- the opening game has been moved to Monday December 10) when they take on the Bison in a game that can be heard on WOKW-FM, 102.9, starting with the pre-game show at 7:15 pm.
ROSTER:
SENIORS: Marcus Stephenson, Adam Benamati
JUNIORS: *Tanner Elensky, *Brett Gardner, *Kyle Johns, *Alex Olson, *Austin Jacobson, Nate Kurtz, Nick London, Josh Shaffer, Jason Thorp, Justin Brooks.
SOPHOMORES: Harrison Bloom, Foster Cannon, Trey Rauckhorst, Alex Hill, Dylan Davis, Jonathon Miller
* DENOTES LETTER WINNER
SCHEDULE:
DECEMBER – 10 at Clearfield, 11 at Brockway, 14 RIDGWAY, 17 at West Branch, 18 at Harmony,
21 KANE
JANUARY – 2 GLENDALE, 4 at DuBois Central Catholic, 8 JOHNSONBURG, 9 at Glendale,
15 ELK COUNTY CATHOLIC, 16 at Moshannon Valley, 22 at Ridgway, 25 BROCKWAY,
28 DUBOIS CENTRAL CATHOLIC, 30 HARMONY
FEBRUARY – 1 at Brookville, 5 SHEFFIELD, 6 MOSHANNON VALLEY, 8 at Kane,
11 CLEARFIELD, 13 WEST BRANCH