Familiar face returns to Palisades
Former Pirates star Karlee Krchnavi is team’s new coach
If there was a Mount Rushmore for Palisades High School athletes, Karlee Krchnavi would definitely be on it.
She graduated in 2016 with the most points in Pirates girls basketball history with 1.652 and added a school-record 1,132 rebounds. As a senior she was The Morning Call player of the year and received the same honor from several other outlets. She went on to play Division I basketball at Binghamton where she appeared in 119 games and started 57 over four seasons and was also an Honor Roll student.
If you want to point to someone and say, that’s what hard work and dedication can do, you could easily point to Krchnavi.
But Krchnavi, now 24, is more than just a special name. She is mature beyond her years and has a unique skill-set that makes her prepared to take on challenges.
She will take on the challenge of being the new head coach of the Palisades girls basketball program where she was a star player just six years ago.
She replaces Gregg Dietz, who resigned after three seasons. Krchnavi was an assistant coach the past two years, including last season when the Pirates struggled through a 2-19 season.
“I can’t even put into words how exciting it is for me,” Krchnavi said. “It’s exciting on so many levels, primarily because Palisades is my alma mater. I’d be excited to get this opportunity anywhere, but the fact that it’s Palisades makes it even more special.”
Krchnavi says her brain “is moving 100 miles per hour” thinking of ideas.
“I am thinking of ideas for fundraising, for plays that I want to input, summer league stuff, camp … everything,” she said. “I already have seen the girls and some of the girls replicate my excitement, which means a lot. You need to get that from that side, too.”
Palisades athletic director Brian Gilbert says Krchnavi is the perfect
choice to take over a program she helped make successful.
“We’re just lucky because how often do you get a superstar female athlete to come back to their hometown and coach at the school and in the sport that she is so well-known. She’s got banners on the wall and plaques in the display case.
“We’re super excited and I’ve already seen the excitement, especially from the younger girls that might have been in elementary school when they could come and watch her play. They’re almost star-struck that Karlee is coaching them. So the turnout has been great. I’m excited to see how things go.”
Krchnavi said there’s a lot she wants to teach the players.
“There’s so much I want to instill in the girls and make them better overall athletes and basketball players,” she said. “But I really want to be a role model for them too, and let them know what I’ve been through and what I had to
do to get to the point where I am today and just show them what strong, successful hard-working women can do.”
She acknowledged that there’s a lot of work to do with a program that won just two games last winter. It was a young team with a lot of freshmen and sophomores.
“We’ll have just two seniors this year with Ashley Amato [who was a member of the Lehigh Valley Carpenter Cup Softball team] being one of them,” Krchnavi said. “It’s a young group and everyone plays multiple sports. We have the athleticism. It’s just a matter of honing in and refining the basketball skills and getting back to the basic fundamentals of when to make a good pass or reading the defense and making a good cut.”
Krchnavi was set to have her first game in the Forks Township Summer League on Thursday night, but has already conducted some open gyms and met most of the players. She sees a lot of interest.
“We’ve had a lot of middle school kids coming out and I am happy to see that,” she said. “The fact that these young girls have the drive and commitment to come out and work to get better and intertwine with the older girls is really great to see. My goal is to build a foundation from the bottom.”
Krchnavi already has a staff in place that will feature Jim Danko and John Jones. Her brother Tyler Krchnavi and Zach Pantoni are volunteer assistants.
Look for her to utilize many of the things she learned playing in the America East Conference at Binghamton and playing in games at places like Notre Dame and the University of Miami.
“We did so many beyond-thecourt type of things that were memorable like the camp we set up for youngsters and a Breast Cancer Awareness Night and all kinds of fundraisers that just created a sense of community,” she said. “I would like to do that on a smaller scale at Palisades and I think a lot of these things are doable. We want to thrive as a program and have fun with it.
“As for on the court, there are so many drills I learned at Binghamton. We were always competing at Binghamton and made things very competitive. That energized everybody. I want to structure a lot of my practices like that. It just gets everyone more engaged. We even had a championship board where you were rewarded for really talking at practice, encouraging your teammates things like that. That’s something I want to do at Palisades.”
Krchnavi, who works for ADP in insurances services in Allentown, said she’s ready to get rolling and remembers what it was like wearing a Pirates uniform and competing in the Colonial League.
“There are challenges that a small school like Palisades has that bigger schools more centrally located in the Lehigh Valley don’t have,” she said. “We have to share athletes and don’t have a Cedar Beach just down the road to play at.
“But we’re going to do what we can go get as many girls committed to our program and get them there as often as we can and we’re going to try to make Palisades girls basketball something they’ll want to be a part of.”