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By Cory Giger
cgiger@altoonamirror.com
Saint Francis women's basketball coach Joe Haigh is taking a leave of absence for personal reasons, the school announced Tuesday, and details about the situation and when he may return are unclear.
Athletic director Susan Robinson Fruchtl will serve as the team's interim coach. She was the Red Flash's head coach from 2007-12 before leaving for Providence, then returned to Saint Francis as AD in April of 2016.
Haigh was Robinson Fruchtl's assistant coach with SFU, then was hired to succeed her and is in his seventh season in charge of the program. He led the Flash to the NCAA Tournament last season.
Robinson Fruchtl said "there's no timetable" on when Haigh might return.
"He requested a leave of absence, and he's been granted that," Robinson Fruchtl said.
Haigh would not comment publicly about the situation when reached Tuesday afternoon by the Mirror.
Numerous sources close to the Saint Francis athletic department were contacted, and none had any clear details on the matter. One source said Haigh was dealing with a family issue, but the coach would not discuss that.
A Saint Francis spokesperson said she's not sure if Haigh will be paid during his leave of absence, and Robinson Fruchtl cited university policy when noting she could not go into any details about a personal matter.
The timing of Tuesday's developments come at a precarious time for the Saint Francis women's basketball program. The season just started last week, and the Red Flash were picked to finish second in the Northeast Conference.
Saint Francis lost its first two games, at Rutgers and Baylor, and travels to Liberty on Saturday.
Robinson Fruchtl felt there wasn't any other choice but for her to take over coaching the squad on an interim basis, and she conducted practice Tuesday night.
"We have a game Saturday, and it's a completely new staff," she said. "No head coaching experience on that staff. ... In terms of running a program, we've got a talented team, we just felt it's the best option for right now."
Saint Francis is a small campus and small athletic department, so Robinson Fruchtl already knows the players on the team well. What does she talk to them about during this process?
"You have to be upfront with them," she said. "I can't share everything because it's a personal matter.
"Life is full of twists and turns. ... They're shocked, of course. If we can teach them anything, you've got to persevere. You've got to stay committed, and you've got to stay focused and control the things you can control."
Such a sudden return to coaching is something Robinson Fruchtl could not have seen coming.
"I wasn't planning on it, for sure," she said. "It's not too long of a hiatus. I'm confident, in terms of basketball, it's like getting back on a bike."
Still, she now will have to handle her AD duties as well as coach a basketball team, something she's never had to do before.
"Right now it's day by day," Robinson Fruchtl said. "But everybody in the department has to step up. The one good thing is we have a really experienced staff overall for a small institution. They understand the culture, understand the environment, understand how things work operationally."
While things play out off the court with regard to Haigh's status, it will be interesting to see how things go on the court, as well, with Robinson Fruchtl returning to coach. She led Saint Francis to the NCAA Tournament in 2010 and '11, but the program's style of play has changed since then.
Haigh runs a very unusual, fast-paced system, which he modeled after the old Loyola-Marymount run-and-gun style of play. It has worked well for him at Saint Francis, which shoots and makes as many 3-pointers as any team in the country, and it's also worked extremely well for one player in particular.
Senior guard Jess Kovatch already has scored more than 2,000 points in her career and is just weeks away from breaking the Saint Francis and NEC career scoring record, held by Red Flash great Jess Zinobile.
Robinson Fruchtl did not coach this style of play when she was a head coach, so the question will be how much she will adapt her own ways to Haigh's style, or if the players will have to slow things down to a degree based on the interim coach's wishes.
"We can't make wholesale changes," Robinson Fruchtl said. "These kids were recruited to play this system. Not that they couldn't play other systems. There are tweaks, adjustments, of course, maybe points of emphasis. There's difference; any coach has differences.
"From my perspective, we have to shore up things. It's early in the season, still trying to figure out rotations, etc, and that's going to be a process. But we're going to have to go to work. We can't have them sit around. We've got to move forward. These kids came here to be part of a great university and win championships."