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Schools

Highland Looks to Rebuild Athletic Program by Connecting with Youth

In part one of a two-part series, we look at the girls' basketball team's attempt to connect with a pair of middle schools.

Symbols of better times for the school's athletic program hang all over the gymnasium at .

For the girls’ basketball team, that symbol comes in the form of a banner that reveals the championships won since the inception of the program. A quick glance serves as a reminder that from 2001 through 2004, the Tartans won conference titles every year, claiming the top spot in either the Olympic Conference or Tri-County League—the school's current conference for all sports except football—along the way.

Since that ’04 season, though, there have been no championships, and not too many victories either.

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And that’s what varsity head coach John Senft wants to change. He knows it won’t happen now and likely not next year or even the year after.

But Senft has a vision for the future and that vision made its first trek into the light Thursday.

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In an effort to connect with Gloucester Township's middle schools, Senft and the Highland program welcomed the girls’ basketball teams from and to their gymnasium for a regular-season game Thursday afternoon. The players got a chance to see what it was like to play in front of a good crowd, be rooted on by cheerleaders, and have their game witnessed by potential future teammates and coaches.

The game was part of a two-step plan that culminates with the varsity team holding Saturday morning clinics for the middle-school kids for two months, beginning Jan. 7.

“This is really big,” said Lewis coach Ed McGowan. “To have the parents come and see their kids play in the high school they may play in is a huge thing. All it does is build interest for the kids to come to Saturday practices. I told my kids, ‘If you want to become a better basketball player, you have to come here Saturday mornings and spend two hours working on your skills.’”

It’s no secret that many of the athletic programs at Highland have struggled to keep up with area competition in recent years—the baseball and cross-country teams being notable exceptions.

The Tartans were dominant in almost every sport prior to the Black Horse Pike Regional School District's addition of Timber Creek Regional High School, which opened in September 2001. Timber Creek's opening took the district from two schools—Triton and Highland—to three, and resulted in Highland's talent pool shifting to the new school.

Because the high schools and middle schools are in separate districts—the K-8 Gloucester Township Public Schools district has 11 schools, including a third middle school, Ann A. Mullen—the connection between Highland and the two middle schools it draws students from has been lacking.

To further complicate the situation, many top athletes have elected to go to Timber Creek instead of Highland in recent years. Senft has seen the numbers drop at Highland, and he knows the only way to reverse that trend is to build a bridge.

“It was a wonderful thing to have them here (Thursday),” Senft said. “Being in a separate district than our middle schools adds in some difficulty for us. When you look at some of the schools around us that have had success recently—Delsea, their varsity head coach is in control of their middle-school program. Kingsway is the same situation; Clearview is the same situation.

"By the time those kids walk into the high school, they know what you’re doing and how you’re going to play basketball. Our kids don’t know that. I have kids coming from two different middle schools with two different systems.”

The basketball clinic will feature instruction from the Highland coaching staff as well as Tartans players. Guard Ayanna Williams is excited about the opportunity to help younger players not only learn the game, but learn a little bit about what the school has to offer.

“(The clinic) is really important,” Williams said. “I want to help them for high school and show them how varsity basketball is going to be and how important it is and how fun it is to be out there with a lot of crowds.”

McGowan, a former cross-country and track coach at Highland, is certainly behind Senft’s efforts. He knows first-hand what a clinic like Senft is creating can do for a program.

“My kids went to Sterling High School and Sterling has been doing this program they are putting in here now for the last 15 years,” McGowan said. “If you know anything about Sterling basketball, you know how good they are. For years, we have been trying to get something like this going and now they got something going. I think it’s going to be tremendously beneficial, I really do.”

The idea to host the weekly clinic was conceived last year but a few hurdles kept it from occurring. Senft said he would not take no for an answer this year and received a full backing from the district’s athletic staff, including both middle schools' athletic directors and Black Horse Pike Regional athletic director Chris Dziczek.

“It’s a situation where we just want to get as many of those younger kids into our gym and learning about us and getting excited about us,” Senft said.

Senft knows hosting one basketball game a year and putting together a clinic will not magically transform the program into a title contender again, but he believes this is a step in the right direction.

A big one, at that.

“We want the kids to have some fun playing basketball and have some fun with the high-school kids,” Senft said. “We want to funnel them into our system and make that transition easier so we don’t lose as many of those kids as we have been losing. I only have three freshmen on my team this year and from two middle schools, that’s just not enough. We want to start making that transition for them easier and make our program stronger.”

That attitude is becoming contagious at Highland, where other coaches are looking at ways to connect with the younger kids to keep them interested in becoming a Tartan. The hope is that by working with the kids at a younger age, it will enable them to compete at a top level once they reach high school.

And, of course, they want that high school to be Highland.

“I can’t speak for other people, but I know that the people I have been speaking to are very interested in that aspect of making sure we get the kids here that are supposed to be coming here,” Senft said. “We are making sure that we are providing an environment where those kids are going to be excited about coming to this school and exciting about playing athletics for Highland High School.”

Editor's Note: Part two of this two-part series focuses on the Highland wrestling team and will be published next week.

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