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Area teams welcome new coaches
(by Steve Novak - August 06, 2009)
Area teams welcome new coaches
By STEVE NOVAK
There are new faces in the varsity coaching ranks at Orange High School and at Hawken School.
Adam Becklam has taken over as varsity football coach for Nick Gerhardt at Orange after serving as an assistant coach in 2007 and 2008. Prior to that, he was an assistant varsity coach at Garfield Heights six seasons.
Becklam, 29, played defensive back at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea and played in high school at Garfield Heights, where he was All-Lake Erie League.
Orange's football team finished last season with a record of four wins and six losses and Becklam said he wanted to try to show his current crop of players how to use the sport to improve themselves.
"I think the biggest thing is to have a unified vision of what football can do for the athletes," he said. "Then you can take the kids to their next point, using football as a vehicle."
Becklam, of Parma, is a chemistry teacher at Orange.
Keith Gisser is the new girls' varsity soccer coach at Orange, having been the head coach at Cleveland Heights the past three seasons.
He takes over a Lions' team that wound up at the bottom of the standings last season in the Chagrin Division of the Chagrin Valley Conference with a 1-14 record.
Gisser said his initial idea on his new job is to try to realign the current attitude about the soccer program.
"The biggest thing at Orange is building a program," he said. "It has only been a varsity program here for four years. It has to be made into a credible program. In the Chagrin Valley Conference, there are no weak sisters as teams. Every single team is strong."
Gisser said he does have the initial advantage of having at least a dozen returning players from last year's team.
In addition to the head coaching duties, the 50-year-old Gisser is the publicity director at Northfield Park.
Patty Hace has been named the girls' varsity basketball coach at Hawken, her first coaching job. She is a 2008 graduate of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.
She played guard on Kenyon basketball team and was a member of the 2007-08 team that was 16-0 during the regular season.
Hace takes over the program from Althea Buford, who was the Hawks' coach for two seasons. Hace said one of her first objectives is to get more girls to come out for the team.
"It seems to be a matter of how many athletes you have for a program. This program may have fallen on the back burner," she said. "You have to bring more vitality to the program, bring on more enthusiasm, and pump up the attitude of the girls."
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