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‘Bench’mark season: With full roster, Tussey girls’ outlook much better

Mirror photos by Gary M. Baranec Coach Todd Gates has won more than 220 games in 13 seasons with the Tussey Mountain girls program.

EVERETT — Last Wednesday, the Tussey Mountain girls basketball program played a tripleheader of junior high, junior varsity and varsity games on the road against Sideling Hill and Inter-County Conference South rival Everett.

This is a normal occurrence for a lot of girls basketball programs in the area, but it certainly wasn’t the norm for the Lady Titans a year ago.

Just before the start of the 2017-2018 season, Tussey’s storied girls basketball team was in crisis. Only five players had signed up for the team.

“We had to recruit some girls,” Tussey Mountain coach Todd Gates said. “We went out and recruited some athletes, soccer players and they helped us out and filled in, but it was touch and go whether we were going to have a team.”

The Lady Titans managed to not just have a team, but excel. Tussey Mountain won 17 games and made it to the District 5 Class 2A championship game and won a subregional game over Westinghouse to qualify for the PIAA Class 2A playoffs before losing to eventual state semifinalist Blairsville.

That experience helped the Lady Titans get off to a hot start and win their first six conference games this season.

“The game experience last year, making the state playoffs, was huge,” Gates said. “Then we had a very good summer, and we played a lot all summer. We’ve got a tough road ahead of us, and we need to continue to get better, but our experience and whole atmosphere from the beginning of last year until this year has really helped us tremendously.”

Tussey Mountain had no seniors on its roster by the end of last season and has just one, Maddie Garner, this year.

“We had a big group of seniors two years ago,” Gates said. “Sometimes, when you have a big group of seniors, you get a smaller group the next year because they get tired of sitting on the bench. That’s kind of what happened to last year’s senior class.”

Garner’s class was never that big, but her leadership on this year’s team has been important.

“A long time ago, a bunch of girls from my grade played,” Garner said. “Then there were only three of us, and then they decided to do other things. It’s been just me since ninth grade.”

Gates dressed 10 players for the junior varsity game against Everett, something he says is vital to the program after a year with no JV games.

“No JV really hurts more than people think,” Gates said. “There are some kids that just don’t get playing time without a JV game. It really helps us out, and it’s a cultural thing, too. Your practice is just drills. You can’t do game-like situations, because you don’t have enough kids.

“That has really helped this year, with the additional girls. We can do scouting reports, and it makes it a whole lot better.”

Leading scorer, junior Lexi Weimert, also stressed the importance of the junior varsity contests.

“They have been able to play more,” Weimert said. “It’s good for them to not have to go straight from junior high to varsity. They are getting experience against some older girls, and that’s helped them and helped us as a team.”

With a 14-player roster, practices have been completely different than a year ago. Tussey Mountain has been able to scrimmage and go beyond basic drills, and as the girls continue to improve, Gates is building them up like many of his great teams in the past.

“It’s coming around,” Gates said. “My teams have always been gritty, defensive, ‘we’re not going to score a whole lot of points, but we’re going to hold you down’ types. I think last year, it was hard to do that, because we didn’t have the numbers.

“The beginning of this year, we didn’t start out that way, but we have turned it around the past couple weeks and really picked up our defensive intensity. That’s what we need to keep improving and become that blue-collar, grind-it-out type of team. We’re starting to get there. We just have to keep growing.”

Now, having two girls get into foul trouble is not crippling.

“It’s been better, because we have more people,” Weimert said. “Last year, we had really small numbers, but this year there’s a whole bunch of girls who can sub in, which makes a big difference.”

Gates said this year’s large junior class along with some good numbers in younger classes and junior high have the program in good shape, and his players want to keep living up to the tradition the school has built.

“We have to keep working hard,” Weimert said. “We can carry over that dedication from last year. It’s really important to all of us, and we have a lot of pride in our program, especially when it gets into the District 5 playoffs. That’s when the games are the most fun, and we’re working really hard to get there.”

Tussey Mountain has dropped back down to Class 1A this season and will likely face a tough test in the District 5 playoffs in Berlin Brothersvalley, but if they get into the state playoffs, the Lady Titans have proven they can win in that classification.

“We’re hoping,” Gates said. “With only one senior, we’ve got another year at it also. We’re hoping we have a bright future ahead of us and that we can make a Class 1A run through the playoffs. That’s our goal.”

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