CURWENSVILLE – Coming off of its best season in several years the Curwensville Area High School girls basketball team welcomes a new head coach.
Eric Duriancik takes over the Lady Tide for Rusty McCracken, who resigned after six successful seasons at the helm.
McCracken led the Lady Tide to the District-9 AA semi-final game last season, losing to Redbank Valley 47-34 and finishing the 2014-15 campaign at 17-7.
Gone from that squad is all-time Curwensville scoring leader (boys and girls) Ciara Strickland who ended her career with a total of 1,525 points.
Two other players moved on through graduation – Heather Thorp and Domonique Newkirk.
Three letter winners are back for Duriancik’s first go-round in senior Shauna Guy, and two juniors, Hannah Dixon and Christine Limbert.
Dixon averaged 9.8 points per game while Limbert checked in with 6.7 and Guy at 6.0 points per contest.
Those three will undoubtedly start for the Lady Tide when they tip off the season on Friday at Glendale in a battle with the Lady Vikings.
Other potential starters are junior Nikki Wormuth, sophomores Madison Olson and Mikayla Warren and freshman Madison Weber.
Coach Duriancik knows that this year the Lady Tide will need to find balanced scoring, saying, “We are hoping to be able to replace the scoring, athleticism, and leadership that Ciara Strickland, Heather Thorp and Domonique Newkirk brought last year as seniors. Approximately half of last year’s scoring graduated. I am hoping that our returning letter winners can step into some new and different roles that they may not be used to.”
As always, when a new coach steps in, game plans and strategies change a bit, and Durancik addressed that, “ We didn’t quite get all of the things in this off-season that we wanted. The girls have been working hard, but we are really behind in trying to install a new system. Coach McCracken had really good success over the last couple of seasons, so we obviously want to continue some concepts that were already in place. At the same time, we are using new terminology and doing things slightly differently than what the girls are used to, so there is going to be an adjustment period.”
Listen to a select number of Curwensville Lady Tide games on WOKW-FM, 102.9. The first Lady Tide game to be broadcast will be from Brockway, Tuesday, December 8, with the pre-game show starting at approximately 7:15 pm.
ROSTER:
SENIORS: *Shauna Guy, Kristina McCracken
JUNIORS: *Hannah Dixon, *Christine Limbert, Nikki Wormuth
SOPHOMORES: Madison McCracken, Madison Olson, Heidi Rowles, Mikayla Warren
FRESHMEN: Jenna Kavelak, Kaitlyn McCracken, Britney Wagner, Madison Weber
* DENOTES LETTER WINNER
SCHEDULE:
DECEMBER: 4 at Glendale, 8 at Brockway, 14 at West Branch, 18 KANE, 21 RIDGWAY, 29 CLEARFIELD
JANUARY: 4 at DuBois Central Catholic, 6 JOHNSONBURG, 11 GLENDALE, 12 ELK COUNTY CATHOLIC
15 at Harmony, 19 at Ridgway, 22 at Brockway, 25 DUBOIS CENTRAL CATHOLIC, 27 WEST BRANCH,
29 at Johnsonburg
FEBRUARY: 2 SHEFFIELD, 4 at Clearfield, 5 at Kane ,6 at Moshannon Valley*, 9 HARMONY,
10 MOSHANNON VALLEY
* JUNIOR VARSITY GAME STARTS AT 1 PM.
NOTE: HOME GAMES IN CAPS. ALL JUNIOR VARSITY (JV) GAMES START AT 6 PM UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED. VARSITY GAMES START 15 MINUTES AFTER JV CONTEST.