Meadows expecting smooth transition coaching Geneva

Halloween of 2011 will always carry a little extra special meaning for Sarah Meadows.

While there wasn’t a single trick to be played, Monday was a definite treat for Meadows, who ran her first official girls basketball practice at Geneva since being named as the Vikings’ new head coach this past summer.

Believe it or not, the Vikings came out of their first preseason practice already a step ahead of where they were at this point last year before they posted a 25-7 record and captured the Upstate Eight Conference River Division title.

During last year’s opening day practice, freshman center Sidney Santos suffered a torn ACL while participating in a layup drill and was sidelined for the season.

“They worked hard and we stayed healthy after the first day,” said Meadows.

Meadows inherits a varsity program that has made winning as commonplace as snow falling during a Midwest winter.

During Gina Nolan’s 7 years as head coach, the Vikings posted an impressive record of 173-38 (.819 winning percentage).

Over the past 6 seasons, Geneva has won 160 of 184 games (.869 winning percentage). Their 4-year mark of 109-17 includes 3 consecutive regional and sectional championships, highlighted by the team’s fourth-place state finish (32-2) in 2008-09, and 31-1 record in 2009-10.

Meadows admittedly feels pressure taking over for Nolan, who resigned as the Vikings’ head coach to concentrate on making a full recovery from her June 2010 diagnosis of breast cancer.

“Oh yeah, for sure,” said Meadows. “She set the tradition. The kids know what winning is. Expectations are always high. In the back of my head, I know that I have huge shoes to fill.

“Gina left a golden road for me,” added Meadows.

Nolan also left Meadows with a Division I-bound player in Marquette recruit Ashley Santos, who averaged nearly 16 points per game as a junior last season.

“She left me with a real nice player,” said Meadows. “Ashley’s going to play huge for us this year.”

The Vikings also lost a player who was a huge part of their past with the graduation of 4-year varsity point guard Kat Yelle.

Yelle, the Vikings’ career leader in assists (337) and steals (314), and scored 1,421 points, will launch her collegiate career tonight at Ohio University.

Without Yelle, the Vikings will turn to seniors Rachel Hinchman and Santos for leadership and experience.

“Rachel will step in and do a nice job,” said Meadows. “Her and Ashley play real well together.”

Santos, a guard/forward who has won 56 of 64 games at Geneva since transferring from Bartlett after her freshman year, understands her role.

“Now that I’m a senior, the leadership role becomes more of a factor now,” she said. “We have kind of a young base with five seniors but we have a really good group. Everyone knows that our expectations are high but we’re all up for it.”

Meadows, who has served as the Vikings’ sophomore coach, expects a smooth transition.

“I’ve coached most of them,” she said. “There’s a couple that I haven’t had before but we worked all summer together so they’re not coming in clueless.”

Meadows doesn’t have any intention of “re-inventing the wheel” at Geneva.

“We’ll still play fast just like Gina did,” said Meadows, “and we’ll press just like Gina did so the tempo of the game will not change at all.”

However, there will be a few differences.

“Probably the biggest change is that we’re going to work more on position skill in situations and workouts,” said Meadows. “We’ll probably get a little more detailed but that’s probably not a huge change because she was into detail, too. We’re just breaking it down a little differently.”

The Vikings also have a little different look in the coaching ranks on the lower levels with the addition of assistants Lindsey Koehn Heuttemann and Caty Whitley Francis. Koehn Heuttemann, a 2002 Geneva graduate, was a member of the NCAA Division III national championship women’s basketball team at Millikin University in 2004-05.

Whitley Francis joins Kelly Horn as freshman coaches.

“They know what it’s all about because they’re Geneva grads,” said Meadows. “It’s cool because these kids remember watching Caty play.”

Geneva begins its 2011-12 season Nov. 19 in its own Thanksgiving tournament before opening the UEC River campaign Nov. 30 against Elgin.

Until then, Meadows will continue working on getting her feet planted.

“I don’t think I’ll feel comfortable until that first game,” she said.

You can reach Craig Brueske at csb4k@hotmail.com.