14— The Press
Some coaches just seem to come by it naturally. For others, it’s an acquired skill. Still others never seem to get it quite right. But for almost a quarter of a century, it’s never been a problem for Harry DeFrank.
Exactly, you ask, what is this “it”? Fair question. “It” is the obligation of every head coach, in every sport, in every season, at every level of competitive athletics to deal with the press. Whether their team is going good, going bad or just playing indifferently, “It” is an escapable fact of today’s sporting life. “It,” as they say, goes with the territory.
Harry DeFrank’s been the face and the voice of the Trinity Lady Shamrock basketball program since June of 1984. Whether by instinct or by learning, “it” is a role at which he’s proven himself, time and again, to be more than adept.
DeFrank’s public relations skills were tested the very day of his appointment. He was inheriting a seasoned team that had gone 51-10 the previous two seasons under Jeff Thompson, including a state championship final. Expectations would be high. So the first and most obvious question he would be asked was this: How is this, his first team, going to do in the season ahead?
“I’m not putting pressure on myself or the girls,” he responded, “but I think we’ll continue to be a good team.” No dodge. No equivocation. No looking for cover. . Just, “we’ll continue to be a good team.” And they were…23-3 in DeFrank’s inaugural season, winning the District 3 AA title in the process.
It was more of the same going into the next season, his second at the Trinity helm. With his four experienced seniors—Rita Balaban, Meghan Finnegan, Gail Beatty and Treanne Burch—back for another go, DeFrank, once again, owned up to his team’s potential. “We won the league last year,” he told the Harrisburg Patriot-News. “If the ball bounces our way this year, we should be all right.”
“All right” they were! The Lady Shamrocks rode the experience and the talents of the returning seniors to a 32-2 record and a state AA championship. Balaban was named to a national high school girls’ All-American team. She earned a basketball scholarship to Providence. Meghan Finnegan took her playing skills to Lafayette, Gail Beatty to LaSalle, the first in the DeFrank roster of Trinity players to move on to collegiate competition.
“Harry DeFrank is another great American success story,” wrote Ronnie Christ, the renowned Harrisburg Patriot-News’ sports columnist, in March of 1990. “He went from an unknown CYO coach to the kindly godfather of girls basketball in the mid-state…He wants the credit to go to his girls, but everyone who knows anything about basketball knows some of the credit must go to him.”
DeFrank was quick to defer. “No one wins without the horses, ” he told Christ.
When DeFrank was approaching his 200th victory at Trinity (200-28 at the time) he told the Patriot-News in January of 1992: “I’ve been blessed with a lot of good kids.” Four years later, it was more of the same. This time it was his 300th Trinity win, and he had this to say: “With all the great athletes and assistant coaches that are here, we were going to reach it sooner or later. I just didn’t think it would come this soon.”
As the 1999-2000 season commenced, DeFrank was approaching the 400th win of his Trinity career. He was so determined to keep the Trinity story about his players and not himself that he told not a soul on that squad about the lofty plateau he was about to reach thanks to their efforts. Jill Glessner, just beginning her standout career under DeFrank, would learn about it from her mother 11 games out. Kara Stetler, the freshman point guard who would spearhead the Trinity girls to a state championship the very next year, didn’t find out until three games out. Junior Kate Bekelja learned about it only two games out.
And when the plateau finally was reached with a 78-43 win over Solanco in a (for Trinity) mediocre 18-12 season, Harry DeFrank was his typical self. “It’s been a lot of work for all of us this year,” he said in his post-game remarks to the media. “The coaches are great. You see them (his young players) grow up every time we play. I’m most proud of the kids who went through this program and got something out of it. “
…Make no mistake: Mellowing or not in his aging years, Harry DeFrank still wants to win. Defeat doesn’t go down easy with him. But in the grander scheme of things, how he and his team handle victory and how they handle defeat was every bit as important as the win or the loss. “Learning to win with class and learning to lose with class,” was the way he put it at the end of 1993-94 season when a DeFrank coached Trinity team, for the first time in his tenure, missed out on a 20-game win season, finishing 19-9. Still respectable, but not quite 20.
A search of his career record found only one occasion in his fabled career where DeFrank’s frustration with his team surfaced publicly. It happened in February 2006 when the Lady Shamrocks, 22-3 at the time, lost the championship game in the Mid-Penn Conference tournament to an undermanned Central Dauphin High.
CD was playing without its biggest scorer--Tanya Powers (sprained ankle, out 1-to-3 weeks)-- and the Shamrocks jumped out to an 11-point, 15-4 lead early in the contest. But they scored only one more field goal and three total points in the remainder of the first half. Ultimately they lost, 46-34.
“I’m angry,” an angry DeFrank told Andrew Shay. “I’ve never had a team like this, with no heart. CD played with heart and deserved it. They had the fight in them and wanted it. When we got up quick on them, it was the worst thing that could have happened to us because it was easy. We got too cocky.” A few days later, he acknowledged privately in hindsight that he may have been too harsh on his squad with his public comments. “I probably shouldn’t have said it that way,” he admitted.
Perhaps DeFrank’s most challenging post-game interview came in the 1997-98 season after a bizarre 52-51 victory over Harrisburg High School at the Trinity gym in an important Mid-Penn Division I regular season contest. The Shamrocks were trailing 51-47 with 23 seconds left when Harrisburg Coach Larry Moore was assessed a technical foul for an undue delay in making a required substitution. Moore ignored repeated urgings from the game officials to designate his substitute for a player who had fouled out. When, in the view of the officials, the delay went beyond reasonable, they “T’d” him up. Guard Tara Twomey made both foul shots to bring the Shamrocks within two. On the ensuing in-bounds play, Twomey was fouled on a three-point shot as time ran out. She calmly canned all three fouls to win the game in as stunning a finish as DeFrank would experience in all his coaching years.
No one was more stunned than Coach Moore. “In my 25 years of coaching, I’ve never seen an official decide a game like that,” he angrily told the Patriot-News. “That’s absolutely terrible that my girls had to have this game taken away from them!!”
DeFrank talked a delicate line in his post-game comments. “This is a heck of a way to win a game,” he said, sensitive to neither question the officiating nor challenge the basis of Moore’s obvious irritation. “We defeated a great team. That’s the sad part about it. I feel badly about the game. Larry is a good coach, and he’s done a great job at Harrisburg.”
As competitive as he is, still DeFrank’s never been one to take himself or his coaching accomplishments too seriously in his public comments. His self-deprecating manner was best expressed when his 2000-01 team won his second state championship, 67-58, over Vincentian Academy (his first since 1986). “I’m happy for these young kids,” he said. “They played tough, they played smart. We beat a good team.” Then he joked: “I figured the law of averages had to catch up with us. We won in ’86 and then lost these other four (state championship) games. 2 out of 6 ain’t bad. It’s not good, but right now, I’ll take it.” He did. (Jeff Pratt remembers when, after one of those state championship losses, DeFrank suggested the school should change the Lady Shamrock team colors from Kelly Green to “silver.” They didn’t.)
Maybe that’s it…maybe DeFrank understood from early on that in athletics, high school athletics in particular, what goes around can just as easily come around. Maybe…just maybe, that’s why boasting publicly about this victory or that…or complaining publicly about this loss or that…is not part of his coaching persona. Winning with class…losing with class, he called it. Through all these years, through all the thrills of victory and all the trials and tribulations of defeat, he’s been, at the very least, true to his code.
Copyright (c) 2008 VPC, L.L.C.