5— Coaching

You might say Harry DeFrank began his legendary coaching career over a half-century ago under false pretenses. You might say that. And, if you did…well, you’d be right! It’s a tale best told in his own words:


“It was in the mid-50’s,” he says. “I was playing in the YMCA industrial league with the Friendly Tavern out of Steelton. We were playing against the Pennbrook Pops. Gilbert Dailey, the funeral director, was playing for them. During a time out, or at halftime, he said to me he was just starting to coach the Saint Francis boys’ grade school team in the CYO league and he needed some help. This was like on a Friday. He said, ‘Monday, can you come out and help me?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ I was there Monday and he didn’t show so I took the team. Tuesday, the same way, he didn’t show again. And that’s how I became the head coach.”


Time had blurred DeFrank’s instant recall of exactly when and where he coached when he was starting out. The more he thought about the question, however, the more the chronology fell into place: 1957-60, boys’ basketball, St. Francis Elementary School in inner city Harrisburg; 1961-68, boys basketball, Good Shepherd Elementary School in suburban Camp Hill; 1969-82, girls basketball at Good Shepherd; and 1982 through 2006 and into 2007, girls basketball, Trinity High School.


In those early CYO years, DeFrank took his coaching experiences one unusual step further. He tried his hand at refereeing. It was a brief experiment, only four years, all at the junior varsity level in the Mid-Penn Basketball Conference. Ask him why, and he responds: “I don’t know, I really don’t know. I only stayed with it for four years. The pay sure wasn’t very good. You’d get $3, $4 a game, if you were lucky. I can’t say I liked it, but it was a part of basketball, which I liked, you know.”


Limited though his officiating venture was, on reflection, DeFrank believes there were some lessons …important lessons…that helped him as his coaching career developed and flourished through the years. The primary lesson, he says, was just how “tough” a job refereeing was. “Very difficult, very difficult,” he recalls. And if the experience taught him anything, he remembers, it taught him to temper his demeanor on the sideline. “Every coach gets upset with calls that go the other way,” he acknowledges. “But everybody sees something a different way. So I learned bad calls are part of the game. I don’t like it, but I don’t go crazy about it, either. Hell, officiating’s a tough job, especially with today’s players, how good they’ve become the last 30-40 years. I’d hate like hell to referee a game between the Harrisburg boys and the Steelton boys, the way they run and dunk. You know what I mean…they’re so quick…”



Harry DeFrank is someone who is just not prone to talk at length about himself. But ask him about the game of basketball…or the players he’s coached…or any of the side issues associated with coaching, and he opens up like a warehouse.


The players…it really starts and ends with the players, he says. Good coaches are good coaches. But good coaches are better coaches when they have good players. And Harry DeFrank will be the first to acknowledge his career has been as successful as it has because of the players who played for him at each stop along the way. ”Good players, good people, very coachable,” he calls them. He’s understandably reluctant to start naming names because he doesn’t want to omit someone he later might realize he inadvertently overlooked. But when some names start to roll out, a representative list—not a complete list, mind you, but certainly a representative list--crystallizes very quickly.


Greg Kadel, “the dentist;” Lee Caruso of Hershey; Dennis Appleberry and Tony Kinn, two local players of high school prominence; John Baer, who would fashion a career as one of Pennsylvania’s premier political columnists and pundits; Joe Catalano, a local restaurateur; attorney Bill Balaban, who went on to play college football at North Carolina; George Yeager, a local high school administrator and former high school football coach himself; and Harry’s sons, “Zip” and Jeff…


These are just some of the boys going back almost 50 years who can say, “I played for Harry DeFrank when…”


The girls? Well that list could be endless. It would start with Rita Balaban…an All-Stater, and an All-American high school selection, DeFrank’s first “star” who took his 1985-86 Trinity team to the Lady Shamrock’s first state championship. Then add players like Mary McCleary, who teamed with Rita at Good Shepherd to win a CYO state championship in his final season of grade school coaching and then went on to a standout high school career of her own at neighboring Cumberland Valley; Gail Beatty and Meghan Finnegan, two of Balaban’s state championship teammates; Robyne Bostick; the Walker sisters, Amy and Chrissy; Ronnie Hergenroeder, who would go on to coach against Harry in a stint of her own at Central Dauphin High School; Michelle Verotsky, a Division 1 recruit who would play at Boston College, come home, serve as an assistant on Harry’s Trinity staff, marry his grandson, Shawn, and go on to a head coaching career herself at a capital region community college; Kristi Dunleavy, another future DeFrank assistant at Trinity; Tara Twomey and Kara Stetler, quick and skilled point guards all; the aforementioned Jill Glessner and, of more recent vintage, Katelyn Murray and Kristen Daly, and their sister successors, Kristen and Allison, respectively.


“A coach is only as good as his players,” Harry says, and, repeating himself, adds instantly, “I’ve been blessed with good players.” That he has.

 

And what about the players…boys or girls? What does DeFrank expect from them? “I expect them to pay attention to everything we do in practice and develop themselves into as decent a player as they can,” he responds. “I tell them to work hard, to pay attention and devote themselves to the game. Dedication is the main word. Sometimes it’s hard to get them to be like that. I want them to go through high school and enjoy what they’re doing. If they can’t feel that way (happy to be on the team), then they don’t belong there. You can’t be dedicated if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing.”


So, logically and by extension, what about the coach? What’s his or her role in this equation? “X’s” and “O’s” certainly are part of it. But there are other elements. They’re called the intangibles. And of the intangibles, the most important—particularly at the high school level—would seem to be how well a coach relates to the players and how the players react to the relationship.


Ronnie Hergenroeder (nee Bonello), who hit two critical free throws in the final 1:20 of Trinity’s first state championship run, played at the collegiate level at St. Bonaventure and returned to coach against DeFrank at Central Dauphin High School. She put it this way for the Carlisle Sentinel: “He knows how to put good chemistry together. It’s one thing to have a lot of talent. But it takes a great coach that can put it together.” Harry DeFrank, if he’s been anything as a coach, has been a good team chemist.



Ask him about that and, again, he demurs. “That comes from being around for a long time,” he says simply.



Team chemistry is one intangible which weighs heavily on a coach, probably every high school coach, from season to season. But there certainly are others…others like try-outs and cuts…varsity and junior varsity assignments…playing time, always playing time and how that sits with the players. More important--particularly in this age where with the rise of women’s basketball at the collegiate level, parents take a more micro-managed interest in their child’s playing career--how playing time for their athlete sits with particular parents. DeFrank doesn’t presume to suggest he has universal answers for the profession. But he does have answers that work for him.


“Every year, try-outs and cuts are a problem for every coach,” he acknowledges. “Me, I talk with them as a group when we start our try-outs. I tell ‘em we appreciate them coming out, but we can’t keep them all; some are going to get cut. You just can’t help that. It’s tough but it’s a part of life. They can’t all stay. We only have so many uniforms (35 from freshmen through varsity).”


Where many coaches…maybe most coaches…post their rosters on the wall after the final day of try-outs, that’s not DeFrank’s way. “I tell ‘em (after the final try-out) if I don’t call out your name, that means you didn’t make the team, and if you want to talk about it, come into my office,” he says. “I go in the office, and that’s how I do it. Posting it on the wall may be the right way for some coaches, but I don’t like it. You get everybody looking at that list. It’s embarrassing to those who aren’t on the list. I don’t want to have them put up with that.”

 

What about playing time? Every year, every team has players who are talented enough to make the squad, but either are not experienced enough or skilled enough to earn a lot of playing time. How does a coach handle that?


“First thing I do is put them on the JVs,” DeFrank answers. “So they’re playing a good two or three quarters every game we have. I can’t just sit them on a varsity bench. With them playing the JV game, now I don’t feel bad when they don’t play. When they come up to the varsity, I try to get them a few minutes, sometimes a lot more depending on the circumstance.

“But I talk to them prior to the year. I say. ‘I’d like to have you as part of the squad. I can’t guarantee you any playing time’ and most of them realize that. ‘Now do you want to be part of the squad and dress with the team, or would you rather forget about it altogether?’ But I do talk to them that way, so they know going in.”


When it comes to experience versus talent…potential or otherwise…in the DeFrank school of coaching, talent wins out every time…



Recruiting and transfers…forever and always, a problem for Pennsylvania high school athletics. The Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association prohibits transfers for purely athletic reasons. Properly so. The PIAA also has punitive powers to apply when warranted, and it does. The problem is…and it has more to do with the nature of the issue than the PIAA itself (when is a transfer really a transfer, or when is it recruiting disguised as a transfer?)…the problem is, the process is so subjective as to defy precise interpretation, much less explanation.


Case in point: The transfer of sophomore Courtney Dentler from Northern High School to Trinity in the 2004-05 academic year. Northern school officials protested to the PIAA and the PIAA ruled the move had more to do with basketball and a dispute between the girl’s parents and the Northern athletic administration and staff than it did for reasons of residency or academics. Trinity and DeFrank appeared on Dentler’s behalf at a PIAA hearing on the case. “If there was a problem between the school and the parents, we didn’t believe the girl should be penalized,” the coach responded when asked why Trinity got involved. “Her parents never talked to me, and I would never talk to them,” he went on. “All she wanted to do was play. But the decision was the decision and that’s the way it went.”


Dentler sat out the 2004-05 season. As a junior the next year, she was a front line reserve for DeFrank. In her senior year, she was a Lady Shamrock starter and a Big-15 regional all-star selection. She also accepted a Division 1 basketball scholarship to Lehigh University as the season began. The work she did with a summer basketball coach and the exposure she gained playing at Trinity was what positioned her for the scholarship offer, she said.


Trinity, as a private school, is open to any student in the area whose family wants to enroll there and is prepared to pay the tuition that goes with it. It also has long been a subject of recruiting whispers. The Lady Shamrock basketball program, because of its outstanding record throughout the DeFrank reign, is a particularly inviting target. But DeFrank is adamant on the issue. “Never! Never happened with me!” he insists when the subject is raised. “There’s not a kid who went through those doors who can say I went after them.” And in his 23 years at the Trinity helm, there’s never been any evidence to the contrary.


DeFrank believes if the PIAA had a precise rule on the subject of transfers, that would end a lot of this uncertainty. He’s probably more right than wrong on this subject. And he has a simple solution to offer: Make a transfer for any reason other than a change of parental residency or responsibility sit out a year of athletic competition. That would put the matter to rest in very short order.




There’s only one way to characterize Harry DeFrank’s approach to coaching. That’s old school…distinctly old school. The players know it from the way he runs his team…in practice and in games. Fans see it, without necessarily knowing it, from the moment they walk into any gym in Central Pennsylvania and spot him on the sideline. Suit coat and slacks, shirt and tie, that’s Harry DeFrank. In an era when turtle necks and sport coats, or coaching shirts and sweaters have become the modern mode of dress for so many coaches across the land, there’s Harry DeFrank (and his male assistants) with a shirt and tie…always a shirt and tie. He’s more Dean Smith and John Wooden than Bobby Knight or Bob Huggins in his dress. Not quite Rick Pittino or John Calipari stylish, to be truthful…but old school proper nonetheless. “When I first started at Trinity, I wore a tie,” he explains. “In all my years here, I’ve always worn a suit coat and tie. It’s just automatic with me. I never think about it.” End of discussion. Not that it’s important to the coaching skills he brings to the game, but it does say something about the personal standards that come with the package. .



There’s another standard DeFrank brings to his profession. That’s the respect he has for his players and the opposition. When the Lady Shamrocks were building a 204-29 record in DeFrank’s first five years at Trinity, his players and what they take from the game—not his wins and losses—were foremost in his mind. “Winning’s not everything,” he told Ronnie Christ. “I think it’s important to do your best, to learn how to win and lose and show a lot of class whatever happens.”


It’s not all been strawberry’s and cream for the Lady Shamrocks under DeFrank. There’s been a share of tough losses to live with, four state championship games prime among them. Yet DeFrank, competitor that he is, always seems to find the proper tone for his team and their fans…

Harry DeFrank purposely sets the bar high in how he reacts to wins and losses. Win or lose, consciously or unconsciously, he never demeans the opposition…never, ever. Once again, it has to do with respecting the game and respecting those who compete in it. “The players are going to grow up in life together. They’re…many of them, at least…they’re going to get in the same college or the same jobs or the same occupation. I want our teams to act like young ladies like they should and show respect for each other and their opponents. And they do, and I give credit to Trinity and the schooling they receive there for that.”


The players, the competition, the game…with Harry DeFrank, it’s never been about himself. The players, the competition, the game…with him, it’s always been about the players, the competition, the game. If Harry’s ever wild about Harry, he certainly doesn’t show it.


Gilbert Dailey could not have known what he was setting in motion 50 years ago when he didn’t show up for those two practices with the St. Francis of Assisi boys grade school team. DeFrank, asked if he ever talked to Daly about his no-shows a half a century ago, just smiles. “We probably did,” he responds, “and we probably laughed about it, you know.” Some laughs last a lifetime. This was one that did.



   

                             Copyright (c) 2008 VPC, L.L.C.