GOOD FIRST IMPRESSION
FRANKLIN TWP. — Kami Traugh had success as a player for Southern Columbia, but nothing as close to what she has accomplished in her first season as coach of the Tigers.
With four returning starters, Traugh helped guide the experienced team to its first-ever state championship appearance, a match-up against last year’s runner-up Neshannock on Friday in Hershey.
Having coached the majority of the team in junior high, and coming away with one loss then, Traugh recognized the talent to succeed.
“I saw that all the skills and the potential were there,” she said. “Now if you had said to me that we’d only lose one game this year against the teams we played, I’d have been more than happy with that.”
That loss, a 60-43 beating by Loyalsock in early January, seems like forever ago. Since a poor display of shooting, boxing out and the inability to hold onto the ball, the Tigers haven’t returned to the loss column. Instead, they sometimes use the feeling they had afterward as motivation, now having won 20 straight, including all their playoff wins except the state semifinal against Mount Carmel by 12-plus points.
“You need things like that and I went up and said thank you to their coach because it was what we needed — the team needed a reality check,” Traugh said. “Sometimes losing is a good thing because it shows what you need to improve on and it gets the monkey off your back a little bit with people talking about being undefeated.”
The reality check settled in nicely for the Tigers with three players — Alli Griscavage (16), Ava Novak (12.2) and Summer Tillett (10.9) — averaging double-figure scoring, while Loren Gehret is at 9.6. Griscavage (12.3 rebounds per game) and Tillett (11.1) are averaging a double-double for the year.
Tillett credits much of those results to a number of factors.
“I got a lot more minutes this year, more than double of what I got last year,” she said. “... Having coached a lot of us in junior high, [Traugh] already knew what our strengths were and what we were capable of doing. She puts us all in the best situations to succeed.”
Traugh is quick to give credit where it is due. Despite knowing the team isn’t quite the fastest in the league, she knew the team could make up for it by doing things such as rebounding better than other squads. She noticed this even from the sidelines last season when she wasn’t part of the Tigers’ staff.
“Most coaches would love to have a girl that’s 6-1 (Griscavage) and we have a lot of quickness and great shooting from the guards and an aggressive defense,” Traugh said. “Even though I wasn’t on the coaching staff last year, I saw a lot of games, and saw that there was a lot of potential and made it my goal to build on what was already there throughout the season.”
And just like her players don’t have to go far for someone to talk to as the pressure mounts, neither does Traugh. It’d be natural for her to be nervous in the build-up to Friday’s game, but it always helps to have her father in her corner. After all, Jim Roth knows a thing or two about winning, having been to 20 state football finals and winning 12 – both PIAA records.
“I got some advice from him when I was coaching at Line Mountain — the program didn’t have a lot of success when I got there, and as a competitor, I don’t like to lose. His suggestion was to always be positive and build off of that,” Traugh said. “I will say that in the last two weeks, we’ve talked a lot more about the kids and their success … He told me to keep them in a routine because they already have pressure to succeed and to keep it as normal as possible just so they’re more relaxed.”
In the end, Traugh wants that state title to join her in the place she spent playing and coaching at a variety of levels: home. If it doesn’t happen this year, she’d still be the first to tell you how proud she is of the team in her first stint as a varsity coach of the Tigers.
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