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The three new additions to this year’s PSA girls’ basketball coaching staff all bring an element that is uniquely their own. And that is a big piece of what Devin Hill, who is entering his second full season and third overall as head coach, is looking for.
“It’s a good staff,” he said. “I really like what each one brings, whether it’s coaching experience, playing in college, playing overseas. I think they’re all going to be really good fits for what we’re trying to do.”
Sabrina Browne is the most experienced, as she has been coaching at one level or another since she guided a Peewee team to a summer league championship when she was 14 years old, which is more than 30 years ago.
TaNajia Smith went from being her high school star to just one of many good players at Dean College and Worcester State and had to adjust quickly to that new dynamic, something just about every player at PSA has to do as well.
And Jessica Kovatch, who just joined the program last week, played overseas for two years and can sympathize with the international players at PSA who are experiencing a new world seemingly every day.
Browne, the head coach of PSA’s Prep Red team, commands respect with her experience and presence. If Hill is out, there is no substitute teacher feel when Browne fills in.
“I’ve been around, training and coaching,” she said. “Part of it is to stay active in the game, part of it is I was the only one in my community who had a basketball hoop in the yard so the boys would come over and I’d end up training them sometimes, charge them 50 cents to dribble in my driveway.
“A man named Kenny Smalls coached me and he always played when he was coaching. I kind of got that from him being a point guard and learning to be the general on the floor. It just came naturally to me. I’m a people-person, I love kids, I love the game. Coaching just came naturally.”
It might not come as naturally for Smith, who jokes that she is still finding her “gym voice.”
“I’m not a yeller, my voice doesn’t get loud,” she said. “So the whole gym has to get quiet or they’re just not going to hear me. Sabrina makes jokes about it. But I’m working on it.
“Devin will ask me in the huddle if I have anything to add, but he’s already said everything I would have said. I think for me this year is a lot about watching and learning, and just having that confidence that I’m not going to know everything and I will learn so much from them.”
Kovatch is still getting her feet wet as a coach as well, after following her college days at St. Francis (Pa.) by playing in one season in Germany and half of another in Italy.
“It was a great experience,” she said. “They were uncomfortable at first because you’re in a new country and you’re on your own. But I learned a lot and I think you learn the most when you’re uncomfortable. Being in a different culture and seeing basketball played differently was eye-opening.
“When I got here, I could hear the accents on a lot of the girls and it reminded me of being overseas and being around people from different cultures. It’s definitely something that I can relate to them and understand the situation a lot of them are in. You’re somewhere because of basketball. You know that basketball can bring you a lot of places.”
By Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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