The ‘Deal’ for hoops

Gene Deal has been Shady Side Academy’s athletic director for 23 years and also had coached the football team for eight seasons a while ago. But now Deal will try his hand at basketball.

Deal is the new boys basketball coach at Shady Side Academy. He succeeds Terence Parham (129-69), who resigned after eight seasons.

“I think it will be fun to get back on the other side of the desk,” said Deal, 57. “Terence did a great job, and we have some good, young assistant coaches who might be ready to be a head coach in a year or so. But I didn’t want to put them in the situation of having to coach a real young team like we have. It can be hard today on coaches — if they’re not quite ready.

“I told the kids, though, the last time I coached basketball I was in North Carolina and Michael Jordan was a freshman.”

That was in the early 1980s at Gaston Day School, a private school in Gastonia, N.C. One of Deal’s coaching opponents was Chuck DeVenzio, who coached at Providence Day School in Charlotte. DeVenzio was a legendary former coach in the WPIAL whose 1967 Ambridge team was one of the greatest in WPIAL history.

“I didn’t know who Chuck was. I only knew of his son, Dickie,” Deal said. “Well, Chuck beat me twice in the regular season in North Carolina, and we got to play him again in the playoffs. I stalled the ball and went four corners on him. I remember we were winning, 12-9, at halftime. Chuck always used to have a towel on his shoulder and as we were walking off the court at halftime, Chuck hit me with the towel and said, ‘Start playing basketball.’

“He got a technical for that. But he ended up winning the game, 28-24.”