Lady Gators’ Guerriere won at every level
If you looked up the definition of winner in the dictionary, if it had a picture illustration, it might very well be for Geibel Catholic High School standout Robin Guerriere.
“My grandfather was always extremely proud of this stat,” Guerriere offered. “By the time I graduated college, I had won nine consecutive championship games. From eighth grade all the way through Geibel and then on the college level at St. Francis.”
She was part of a special group of girls at Geibel who had an unprecedented run of success capturing four straight WPIAL Class AA titles from 1993 through 1996. That group grew together from grade school.
“The entire team at Geibel from when I was a freshman,” Guerriere recalled. “We had seniors on that team that went to St. John’s that we played with. The girls that also joined the team and met up with us at Geibel, they were from St. Mary’s or Conn Area or St. John’s Byzantine, so it was a group of girls that not only played together, but knew each other, competed against each other in the CYO Leagues for years. It just kind of all meshed into one big group when we made it to Geibel.
“In eight grade at St. John’s it was myself, Tara Cochrane, Alison Watts, and in eight grade we actually won the CYO state championship that was held in Pittsburgh. When we were in seventh grade Erin Rupp was also on our team, she was a year ahead of us. When we were in seventh grade we were in Reading participating in the CYO state championship. There was three years where that St. John’s team was participating in state championships at the Catholic School grade school level.”
That core group at Geibel compiled a record of 106-9 in their four years (this includes state playoffs). They won WPIAL championships in 1993, 94, 95 and 1996, and had undefeated seasons until falling in the PIAA playoffs in 1994 and 1995.
“We expected to win when we got to high school,” Guerriere stated. “Number one we were a group of friends playing together, which you can’t underestimate that power sometimes when you have a group that just hung out together. Geibel is a small school so we did everything together. We played volleyball together. It made that run more fun, we didn’t have the pressure, we were having fun.”
Geibel’s failures in the PIAA Tournament still weigh heavily on Guerriere and the rest of the Lady Gators.
“That’s the one black eye that we have,” Guerriere lamented. “Especially when some of the teams that we played, Greensburg Central Catholic who we beat in the WPIAL Championship three years in a row and they made it to the state tournament (final) and we didn’t. In one breath you are upset about that, but no team since us has won four WPIAL titles in a row. It is something to be proud of.”
Coach George Bortz led the Lady Gators to their great success and Guerriere has fond memories of him.
“I had a really good relationship with Coach Bortz,” Guerriere stated. “Even to this day I still see him on a pretty regular basis. He was tough, he was fair and he knew how to get you to play. He knew the buttons to push to get the results.”
The 5-foot-5 Guerriere tallied over 1,400 points at Geibel, she was All-Fayette County, All-Section.
AAU basketball played a big part in Guerriere’s development as a player.
“Oh absolutely, I started AAU and actually played for Morgantown when I was in grade school,” Guerriere stated. “Playing in Morgantown was a different style of basketball. You were constantly playing with AAU. When we were in high school we tried to keep the team together as much as we could and we all ended up playing for Chris Cluss and the Uniontown Hustlers. We also played in three or four leagues in the summer leagues.”
Guerriere and her teammates enjoyed great success in volleyball on Rick Watkins coached teams that were 8-8 her freshman season, 12-6 her sophomore year, 22-4 her junior year and third in the WPIAL and 18-2 her senior campaign and fourth in the WPIAL.
“I was a first team All-State setter for a couple of years,” Guerriere said. “We All-State hitters and we had never touched a volleyball until we were in ninth grade. I enjoyed volleyball, but basketball was always my sport. Volleyball was my stress relief, basketball is what I put all my focus and attention to.”
When Guerriere graduated from Geibel in 1996 she decided to play college basketball at St. Francis of Loretto.
“It was a fairly easy decision to go to St. Francis when I stepped on campus,” Guerriere revealed. “I was getting looks for volleyball and basketball and St. Francis was Division I and relatively close, and they were building something special there.”
Special indeed, during Guerriere’s four seasons at St. Francis the Red Flash made four straight NCAA tournament appearances winning the Northeast Conference four times. They posted records of 1996-97: 21-9/16-2 NEC, 1997-98: 22-8/14-2 NEC , 1998-99: 18-12/14-6 NEC and 1999-00: 23-8/15-3 NEC.
Guerriere scored 329 career points and dished out 291 career assists (10th all-time at SFU). Her career was greatly hampered by a knee injury that she suffered.
“It was a playoff game my sophomore year on our home court,” Guerriere remembered. “I tore my ACL, it was to comeback from that. It humbles you to be injured like that. I was a different player when I came back. You lose a step, but I believe I became a smarter player.”
When Guerriere graduated she was an assistant coach for two seasons at West Liberty State College. Now a working mom, she is Manager at Century Construction and Development Corp and has three children: Nathan, who plays basketball for Uniontown, Grace and Sofia. She is married to Will Amend.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Monday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.