Published: January 6, 2012 3:00 a.m.
Garrett coach likes view from big chair
Every so often it hits him, as the girls cut or screen or jump out on the shooter. That big chair? The pole position on the bench that never looked all that lonely when he was sitting a door or two or three down from it?
Houdini should have pulled off such an illusion.
“Yeah, there are still times when I catch myself saying ‘OK, you’ve got to make this decision right now,’ ” says Bob Lapadot, who’s been around Garrett High School girls basketball for 16 years but was maybe never of it, never so much consumed by it, as he is now.
With the Garrett girls taking an 8-5 record into the 2012 portion of the season.
With the ACAC tournament of which the Railroaders are defending champions mere days away now.
With Lapadot, a Garrett boy who came to all of this when he was barely out of high school, kneeling during timeouts and feeling every eye on him for the first time.
Recruited as a 19-year-old assistant by Dan Feagler, he’s a first-year head coach at 37, and, oh, the things he knows now. How much work it is, being the man in charge. How much planning and detail goes into even something as routine as a daily practice. How much falls on him that never fell on him before.
“I don’t care how long you’ve been an assistant or been around it, you never know until you’re in it,” Lapadot says. “Obviously, in the middle of a game at some points, something will come up, a decision you have to make to sub or not to sub, to call a timeout here or not to call a timeout. Those are all things, as you sit on the bench as an assistant, you think you always know what you would do. But you have to experience that stuff firsthand. You have to be put in that position.”
And that’s even if you’re Lapadot, who, as he likes to say, “learned from the best.” When Feagler stepped down last spring after one final 22-3 ride, he took with him 265 victories in 15 seasons. Two girls who averaged a combined 22 points also departed via graduation.
That left Lapadot with three seniors (Jordyn Knott, Katie DePew and Laura Moynahan) and a couple of sophomores (Brandi Dawson and Kaitlin Wisel) to carry on the fight. On the plus side, he didn’t exactly need a seating chart to identify them.
“Hopefully I think the kids haven’t had to go through much of a transition,” Lapadot says of that. “And they’ve been hungry to prove themselves. It’s something we’ve talked about every day.”
And so far, so OK. The Railroaders won five of their first seven games, then went 3-3 in December, a dip attributable mainly to Knott going down with an ankle injury in a loss to South Bend St. Joseph’s. Lapadot was hoping she’d be ready to practice by the end of this week and be back in the lineup by the time the Railroaders open the ACAC tournament at first-place Leo on Tuesday.
No one points more toward the ACAC’s annual fling than Garrett, after all.
“It’s our No. 1 goal,” says Lapadot, whose team is 3-1 in conference and in a three-way tie for second with Southern Wells and Woodlan. “If you look at our goal sheet in our locker room, that tournament is our No. 1 goal every year. That Tuesday night is probably one of the hardest fought games you have every year because everybody is fighting to get to the Coliseum. Just being in that venue means so much to the kids.”
Just being in the gym every day, on the other hand, means the world to Lapadot.
“I love going to practice every day with those kids,” he says. “It’s been so much fun.”
Change of venue and all.
Ben Smith has been covering sports in Fort Wayne since 1986. His columns appear four times a week. He can be reached by email at bensmith@jg.net; phone, 461-8736; or fax 461-8648.
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