Mark John hired as Laurel Highlands girls coach
Mark John guided Mustangs for 22 years. Now he’ll see what it’s like to coach Fillies.
The Laurel Highlands School Board hired John as the girls varsity basketball coach in a special meeting on Friday morning, with seven affirmative votes and two abstentions.
John led the Laurel Highlands boys basketball team to over 270 victories in a 22-year span that ended in 2004.
Before the 2004-05 season began, Rick Hauger left his post as the Laurel Highlands girls basketball head coach to take over the Mustangs. Gerry Slampak stepped in for Hauger as the Fillies’ head coach and held that job the last three seasons.
John doesn’t think he’ll have to make any major adjustments when it comes to coaching girls instead of boys.
“I really won’t know for sure until I get into it, but I don’t think coaching girls as opposed to boys will be that much different,” said John, who guided the Mustangs into the playoffs 13 times. “From my observations in watching the undergraduate tournaments we run, I don’t see that much difference in the coaching aspect of it. I don’t think there would be that much change.
“You still want you players to do the same things, to get after it, to execute and to do what they need to do.”
John doesn’t expect to give the girls basketball team a complete overhaul.
“I would think some things will stay the same,” John said. “There may be some changes philosophically, but nothing extreme.”
John led the Mustangs into the WPIAL playoffs with a 14-8 overall record and an 8-4 mark in Section 2-AAAA in the last season he was a head coach.
“People have always asked me the past three years if I missed coaching, and I did,” John admitted. “I missed being around the game, I missed the kids, I missed the fans and I missed the officials.”
John will remain on as Laurel Highlands athletic director as well.
“I’m going to continue to focus on my A.D. duties and the girls basketball team and do the best I can do,” John said.
John becomes the eighth head coach since the girls program began with the 1974 graduating class.
The others, according to Laurel Highlands records provided by Barry Rosner, were Betty Fagler (five years, 1974-77 and 1979), Mike Hritz (one year, 1978), Drinda Shelby (one year, 1980), Abe Everhart (four years, 1981-84), Bob Hogan (10 years, 1985-94), Hauger (10 years, 1995-2004) and Slampak (three years, 2005-2007).