A-K Valley’s 1st-year boys basketball coaches adjust quickly to new surroundings

By: HSSN Staff
Monday, January 7, 2019 | 7:48 PM

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Aaron Epps enjoyed his year off from coaching, but as the WPIAL basketball playoffs rolled around last February, he began to feel the itch a bit again.

He heeded the call and finds himself on the sidelines again, but this time with a new challenge. Epps, who previously coached girls basketball at Hempfield and Kiski Area and before that as an assistant at Butler, is coaching high school boys basketball for the first time at Springdale.

“I’ve really enjoyed it so far,” Epps said. “Coaching is coaching, really. There’s really not a difference. A lot of it, it comes down to motivating kids and getting kids to buy into what you’re telling them. That’s (the same) for boys and girls.”

The four first-year boys basketball coaches in the Alle-Kiski Valley — Springdale’s Epps, Apollo-Ridge’s Greg Fox, Freeport’s Wayne Greiser and Kiski Area’s Will Saunders — all previously led programs before and returned to the bench this season after some period of time away.

For some, it was a short absence: Greiser was an assistant at Freeport the past four seasons after coaching at Yough from 2010-14, while Saunders was an assistant at North Allegheny the last two years after previous coaching stops with the boys teams at Shady Side Academy, South Park and Montour and the girls team at North Allegheny. Epps spent a year away from the WPIAL after stepping down as Hempfield’s girls coach after the 206-17 season.

Fox had the longest time away from the sidelines, coaching Apollo-Ridge from 1996-2009 before re-assuming the position this spring.

“I put a lot of time in the first time around, and I guess I maybe sort of forgot,” Fox said. “It was hard to realize how much time you put into that job. You put as much time as you want to, but to be successful and do it the right way, you’ve got to spend a lot of time.”

While practices and games eat up a lot of time, Fox said watching film does, too — and with the invention of Hudl since he last coached, film is more accessible and more prevalent.

“I spend a lot of time watching film, breaking down the film, looking at our opponents and looking at our own team,” he said. “If I thought I spent a lot of time before watching film, now I spend even more.”

The four first-year A-K Valley coaches are leaning on their prior experiences, believing those are helping them this time around in their positions.

“Sometimes, you’ve got to make decisions on the fly, and you don’t really have time to consult with your assistants,” Greiser said. “I’ve learned how to deal with that a little bit. And then the last couple of years being an assistant at Freeport, (previous coach Mike Beale) let us be more hands-on as assistants, and that was great. I was working with the kids a lot … it was nice to be able to jump in and do that.

“It’s definitely a little easier the second time around. You know what to expect.”

This time Greiser also knows what to expect from his own players, given his familiarity with the team. He visited Yough twice before he was hired there — once as an assistant coach at Wilkinsburg, when the Tigers went there for a game, and another time for the interview.

“There’s not that whole adjustment of the players learning the coach and the coach learning the players’ strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “I already have knowledge of that. I think that makes it easier.”

Fox went to, coached at and now teaches at Apollo-Ridge, so he knows his players, too. But Saunders, who never coached in the Alle-Kiski Valley before this season, and Epps, who coached at Kiski Area for just one season, are learning their new constituencies.

Saunders said after getting hired he was invigorated by the opportunity and could see Kiski Area becoming his last job. Epps is enjoying his first experience at Springdale.

“The biggest difference I’ve had to adjust to is Hempfield is big Quad-A: bigger facilities, everything’s bigger,” he said. “Hempfield’s not as blue-collar as what Springdale is. So the dynamics of the types of kids you’re coaching is a bit different, but I’ve loved coaching both places. Both places I’ve had great kids, great parents.”

Epps, who led Hempfield to a WPIAL runner-up finish, also is adjusting to the faster-paced, more physical boys game. He said he employs more zones and sees more zones employed against his team, but while his coaching philosophies are shifting, his coaching style remains the same.

“I really coach (both genders) the same — I coached my girls (teams) like they were boys,” he said. “I don’t believe it when people say you can’t coach girls like guys. I did. I know a bunch of other successful coaches in girls that do, too. Obviously, there are certainly things you can’t say, but I coach them the same.”

To this point, Epps has Springdale at 7-3 and tied for first place in Section 1-2A. Freeport under Greiser is 6-3 and 1-1 in Section 1-4A, with all three losses coming to ranked opponents. Kiski Area is 3-8 under Saunders, who won three WPIAL and one PIAA title at Shady Side Academy, but the Cavaliers already have surpassed last season’s overall and section win totals.

Apollo-Ridge under Fox is having the most interesting season: five straight losses to start the campaign, followed by five straight victories. The Vikings’ winning streak ended last week against Summit Academy, but they’ll look to begin another one Tuesday against Epps’ Dynamos.

“We talked about this before to the kids: This is a process,” Fox said. “It takes time to build. … The kids come to work every day, and that’s what we’re trying to build.”

Doug Gulasy is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Doug at dgulasy@tribweb.com or via Twitter @dgulasy_Trib.

Tags: Apollo-Ridge, Freeport, Kiski School, Springdale