IN SHORT: Former freshmen boys coach takes reins for North Pulaski’s high school girls team for upcoming 2006-07 season.
By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
After working through the volleyball season with its fifth coach in five years, many of the same Lady Falcons will move into basketball season, where they will play for the second coach in 15 years.
Longtime NP freshman boys head coach Todd Romaine will take over for departed Katrina Mimms, who was the head Lady Falcon for 14 seasons.
Romaine is taking over a program that has not been producing young talent for some time. The NPHS’ girls feeder program reached an all-time low when not enough players turned out to put a freshmen team on the court.
Despite the lack of players being sent up to the program the last few years, Romaine believes there is a good core of talent on the current high school team.
“We’ve got almost everyone coming back that was supposed to come back,” Romaine said. “We lost one big girl, but everyone else is back and I think we’ve got talent. There’s potential on this team. I’m excited about the opportunity.”
North Pulaski won’t court a girls freshman team this year either, but mainly because there is no one to coach them. Romaine has been given the option of placing his six ninth graders on a junior-varsity squad, or playing them up on the varsity level.
“Not having a ninth-grade coach kind of hurts you a little bit, but maybe it’ll work out for the best for us for the time being,” Romaine said. “I’ll have them with me right away, and I’ll get a chance to spend some time watching the eighth graders and seeing what we have coming.”
Romaine doesn’t know anything about his freshman talent. As the freshman boys coach, he watched some eighth-grade boys games, but paid little attention to the girls.
“I had no idea any of this was going to happen,” Romaine said of the sudden opening for the high-school girls job, and the subsequent offer for him to take the job. “I never thought for a second during last school year that I’d be the girls head coach this season. Of course if I’d known that I’d know a lot more right now about what we’ve got.”
Romaine is also in the fact-gathering stage about his new conference. The AAAAA-East is loaded with teams that play a vastly different style than the teams in the former AAAA-Southeast.
“I got on Mapquest last night just to find out where some of these schools are,” Romaine said. “I didn’t even know where these schools are. Now I’m trying to get some information about the teams. I’m going to start making some phone calls and seeing what I can find out. I’ve gathered so far that it’s a pretty good conference top to bottom. There won’t be any easy games, but I think this team can be successful. Like I said, we’ve got talent.”
