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Posted Nov. 30, 2007

Smith's aura still strong at Witt

On June 26, the Wittenberg community lost a coach. Her family lost a wife, sister and daughter. Cancer had taken women’s basketball coach Pam (Evans) Smith at the age of 47.

Wittenberg's Sarah Jurewicz continues to draw inspiration from her predecessor, Pam Smith.

Originally diagnosed with cancer in 1990, Smith always put her team and players first. Going through an entire day of chemotherapy only to return to the Wittenberg campus in time for practice was a common occurrence for the beloved coach.

A memorial Web site was constructed for Wittenberg’s all-time leader in victories in any sport soon after her passing. Many former players, family members, colleagues and parents have written thoughts and memories of Smith. Several themes emerge from the comments. Messages of sorrow and sympathy are equaled by those of respect, admiration and courage.

"I definitely had some difficult moments, but I’ve also drawn strength from that," said Sarah Jurewicz or Say-J, Wittenberg’s all-time leading scorer and Smith's successor. "There have been times, especially early when I first got to Wittenberg when I was sitting in the office and I was thinking, ‘here’s an instance where I would call Coach Smith for some advice.’

"I would sit there and remind myself that I was actually the coach now and not the player because the last time I interacted with this campus, I was a student-athlete," she added. "It was just a different mindset. It has been hard to think about the fact that she is no longer running this program because I looked up to her. I thought she did just a marvelous job of it."

At the beginning of the school year, Wittenberg did not have a successor to Smith. The selection committee went looking for a qualified candidate and found one in Jurewicz. The 1998 Wittenberg graduate had experience as an assistant coach at Savannah College of Art and Design as well as Colorado College.

"My one reservation was when I was told it was going to be an interim position," Jurewicz said. "I was worried because I felt like the team wouldn’t think I was coming in to put my stamp on the program and do my best with this program.

"I realized that I was asked to take the position because the hiring committee felt like I was going to be the person to help them through the transition," she added. "I know coach would be happy for me and she would love to see one of her former players take the program over."

Though replacing a legend in Springfield will be a constant challenge for Jurewicz, her first message to the team was about celebrating the Wittenberg tradition and honoring Smith.

"When I met the team, I told them our motto was going to be about revealing the remarkable this year because there is a lot of different ways you can measure what is remarkable," said Jurewicz. "I told them that they will continue to reveal remarkable things this season by getting through each hurdle that comes in their path.

"Before our first game, I stood up there and told them that over the last month and a half when we’ve been practicing, we’ve created a really strong community here," she added. "We’re in this together and tonight we’re going to go out and show people that we are together building the best basketball team we can be. We’re here to compete and we’re here to endure through everything."

While Jurewicz tried developing a bond between her and the players on the team, those in uniform were thankful to see a former Tiger take over where Smith left off.

"Say-J has been a blessing," said senior forward Katie Gregorevich. "She has made the transition as easy as it can be, as smooth as it can be. She was a former player of Coach Smith, so she is grieving just as much as we are. This is a difficult situation for her. She has done an amazing job at just understanding what we’re going through, recognizing that, but also keeping us focused on what we need to move ahead towards."

"We knew Coach [Smith] would take care of us and send us someone that she wanted us to be with and I think Coach Jurewicz has been that for us," senior Ellie Stonecash said. "She’s really been everything we could have asked for at this point. It’s comforting knowing that she played for Coach Smith and she’s building on the foundation that she set and continuing the things Coach Smith taught us."

Being judged as a successful coach can be done in a variety of ways. Some look at championships and won-lost records as indicators of managing skills and Smith had those, having won 401 games and 11 North Coast Athletic Conference regular season crowns.

Success can also be looked at through the quality of people produced by a program. During her 21-year tenure at Wittenberg, Smith helped mold young women into successful student-athletes who were capable of achieving their dreams.

When the Tigers took the court in Cincinnati two days before Thanksgiving, they carried heavy hearts into their game against Mount St. Joseph. They also brought the memories of and lessons from Coach Smith with them in their minds.

"She was a great basketball coach, but even more so, she was pretty much our second mom when we’re up at school," said Ali Rohlfs, one of three seniors for Wittenberg this season. "She just stressed so much to us that academics is what’s going to get you far in life and basketball is an extra plus and a way to relieve some stress in your life. She always stressed that we keep working hard."

"She’s the most amazing woman ever," Gregorevich said. "I think if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s to work through adversity and to prevail."

"You’ve got to control the things that you’re able to control and keep persisting, no matter the circumstances," Stonecash said. "She went through so much and she kept going. There’s things that you can control and what you can control, you just have to make the most of. [We have to] keep playing basketball, the sport that we love, to keep going and keep pushing forward. That is what she did and she was the perfect example of persistence."

That persistence paid off in an emotional 66-52 victory against Mount St. Joseph. While everyone involved with the program knew the season would be different without Smith’s physical presence, from the best seat in the house, she watched her Tigers pour everything into the win.

"I’ve never been so proud to part of a team before," said Gregorevich. "We played 100 percent as a team and it was amazing. We had more fans than Mount St. Joe’s.

"Say-J actually has a chair at the end of the bench," she added. "The first seat on the bench is going to be left open all season. That’s in memory of Coach Smith. Ellie (Stonecash) and I have decided that we’re going to touch it before we go on the floor."

While the Tigers are 1-0 in 2007-08, they want to honor their former coach with more than just one game. They are looking to make this season one to remember.

"We talked about our level of successes and just giving our best every night and get ourselves in a position to be the most successful we can be," Jurewicz said. "That is really giving our best no matter what the opponent, no matter what the situation and to just enjoy every moment.

'KNEE'D TO SUCCEED: If injured Washington University point guard Sean Wallis was looking for something inspiring when he watched his team beat UW-Platteville last weekend, he could have picked not only the performance of his team without him, but also that of his opponents- particularly Pioneers center Jeff Skemp.

The 6-10 Skemp missed all but the first eight games of last season with a knee injury, albeit one significantly different from Wallis’, but still quite severe. Skemp proved he was back in that weekend contest against the Bears, making 11-of-12 shots from the field in defeat. He scored 23 points, nearly matching the total of 26 he had in the first three games.

“I’m still knocking off a little bit of the rust,” Skemp said, who is averaging 12.3 points and 6.8 rebounds, on 68 percent shooting, in his first four games. “It took me through the first couple weeks of practice (to feel good playing) because my conditioning

Skemp tore his meniscus, which is cartilage, in his right knee last Dec. 20, but it was a tear that was more troublesome, and more rare than most. His doctor had to re-tear the meniscus and suture it back together, and told Skemp that had he let it heal on its own, it would have healed improperly. The original diagnosis was that Skemp would miss two to four weeks. In the recovery room following surgery on Dec. 23, that got changed to three months. Then, in March, scar tissue got caught in a joint and arthroscopic surgery was needed to clean that up.

“I had an immobilizer on my knee for four weeks, and lost a lot of the muscle composition in my quads, so I had to do muscle stimulation work,” Skemp said, describing the rehab process. “I did a lot of riding of the exercise bike. I met with a physical therapist twice a week for half an hour, and he would check my range of motion, to see how far I could bend the knee. By mid-May, I got back to running, jumping, and doing those kinds of things. This fall, I took a conditioning class and did a lot of pool exercises.”

There were significant real-life effects besides that Skemp couldn’t play basketball. He couldn’t drive for a month after the surgery, and he couldn’t do simple things either.
           
“You don’t think that picking something up off the floor is hard until it’s painful to do,” Skemp said.

Even now, Skemp has practices after which he’ll still be limping a bit, but ice and ibuprofen take care of that. He says the best thing that he’s gotten from the experience is something that Wallis alluded to in his blog entry the other day -- that watching from the bench for an extended period of time can improve your game.

“You see things that make you a smarter player on the floor, like why a team double-teams, and when they double-team,” Skemp said. “One thing I really noticed is how, when you’re in the heat of things during a game, you don’t see when a teammate or someone on the other team is tired. I learned that sometimes you do need to get a break, rather than staying in and taking a possession off. You need to take breaks and get a sub, so that when you are on the court, you can play to your full potential, all the time.”
           
“I would (tell Sean) to take what he learned from sitting out to make himself and his teammates better.”

WORTH WATCHING: nteresting matchups in Division III this weekend.

Friday
Wheaton-No. 16 Hope and Carthage-No. 15 Calvin (men’s/women’s): Part of the MIAA/CCIW Classic and good measuring sticks for all teams involved. The MIAA squads have the edge in the matchups in both genders, but an early-season victory for either CCIW team wouldn’t be a huge surprise. Wheaton point guard Kent Raymond is off to another great start this season, averaging 24.5 points.

Babson-Claremont Mudd Scripps (men’s): Consider the intrigue of having two schools, separated by 3,000 miles, meet in the middle, at Washington University as part of a four-team weekend tourney. Babson is 1-4 but that’s deceptive, because the Beavers have lost three straight games to pretty good competition (GNAC favorite Emerson, Trinity, and Brandeis).

Baruch at No. 5 Kean (women’s): Kean thrashed CUNYAC champ Lehman, 106-67 earlier in the season, but fellow CUNY Baruch usually stays competitive with the nation’s elite teams (see 2004 upset of No. 2 NYU), a billing properly given to Kean at this point.

Saturday
No. 2 UW-Stevens Point at No. 20 UW-Whitewater (men’s): What better way for the WIAC season to begin then with this matchup, of No. 2 vs No. 20? Stevens Point swept the three meetings last season (two of which were close games). The Pointers follow that game by playing at UW-La Crosse, which already has a giant-killer win over No. 4 Augustana. Stevens-Point’s top three scorers, Pete Rortvedt, Steve Hicklin, and Khalifa El-Amin are hot from 3-point range, going a combined 28-for-54 thus far.

DePauw at Centre: Borrowing from Hoopsville’s South Region reporter, Marcus Fitzsimmons who said this would be a really good game between last year’s top two in the SCAC. Hopefully it will be better than the last meeting at Centre, a 73-41 win for the home team. There was no rematch, until now, because DePauw got knocked out in the SCAC semis, with Centre eventually winning the crown.

Capital at Baldwin-Wallace (women’s): Capital opens its OAC season with an arch-rival, but gets no rest, as it hosts Washington University on Sunday, then visits Wilmington on Wednesday. That’s a grueling test, but one that should simulate NCAAs quite well, should Capital get that far this season. By the way, the Sunday meeting with Wash U pits rival members of the 500-win club (Dixie Jeffers and recent addition Nancy Fahey) against each other.

Sunday
St. John Fisher at No. 21 Stevens (men): One of the interesting notes about Stevens moving into the Empire 8 is that it created longer road trips for itself and its opponents. St. John Fisher will be the first to feel that, making the five-hour bus trip to Hoboken. It’s a good chance for Stevens to make a statement that it will be the league favorite.

Fitchburg State at WPI (men): Fitchburg is 4-0 and coming off a nice upset of Rhode Island College. A road win at WPI, going up against the Engineers new run-and-gun style, would give Fitchburg its best start in team history.

If you have a tip or note, send it to atn@d3hoops.com.

Previous columns
2007-08 columns
March 6: Faith restored
Feb. 27: John Jay, Cinderella
Feb. 21: No safety net
Feb. 14: Ursinus better enough
Feb. 8: Hope-TMC on collision course
Jan. 31: Plattsburgh's big shot
Jan. 24: UMD answers call
Jan. 18: Like Bosko, like son
Jan. 11: Keystone stakes
Dec. 13: Unstoppable
Dec. 7: UWW aiming deeper
Nov. 30: Coach's shadow lingers
Nov. 15: Strong duo
2006-07 columns
2005-06 columns
2004-05 columns
2003-04 columns
2002-03 columns
2001-02 columns

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