These coaches form unique bond ... it’s all about family
Tri-State Sports & News Service
Dave Petruska moved briskly through the handshake line last season after his Deer Lakes girls basketball team lost the first of two games to Mars, which was coached by his mother, Dana. No hugs. No kisses. Just a brief, “Nice game,” and it was off to the locker room for the 27-year-old Mars alum.
“It was very hard for me to accept,” said Petruska, in his second season as the Deer Lakes coach. “We both hate losing. I was reeling from it.”
If you think Dana Petruska was offended by her son’s reaction, well, then you just don’t know this 29year WPIAL coaching veteran and former Pitt basketball player.
She loved every minute of it.
“That’s just part of the competitiveness,” said Dana Petruska, who got a big hug the second time the two played. “I had some people in the family say that I tried to run up the score, things like that. But the truth is, we just don’t like to lose under any circumstances, so that was a tough one.”
The Petruskas comprise one of two parent-child coaching duos in WPIAL girls basketball.
The other is Gary Kacsur of Fort Cherry and son Ryan of Sto-Rox. The Kacsurs are in their fifth season at their respective schools.
So far, the parents hold a 2-1 edge in these family-affair matchups.
For the Petruskas, mother knew best twice last season in the former Section 1-AAA, while the elder Kacsur lost his only meeting to Ryan’s Sto-Rox team in nonsection play.
The Kacsurs are scheduled to play again on Feb 11 as part of the Shady Side Academy tournament. The Petruskas no longer face each other because Mars moved to Class 5A and Deer Lakes to 4A as part of the WPIAL’s realignment.
“Dave moved back in with us this year — and he said the only reason he could do it is because we don’t play anymore,” Dana Petruska said, laughing. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be sharing a house.”
All four of the coaches are jockeying for playoff position. Mars entered Thursday night’s action with a 13-5 record, 7-2 in Class 5A Section 4. Deer Lakes was 6-11, 54 Class 4A Section 1; Sto-Rox 13-5, 7-4 Class 2A Section 2; and Fort Cherry 8-9, 4-7 Class 2A Section 1.
“This is the time of year when we all love to coach,” the elder Kacsur said. “You like the challenge.”
In his first and only meeting against his dad last season, Ryan Kacsur powerfully embraced his father at the SSA tournament. The event is held to raise awareness for breast cancer, which took Ryan’s mom and Gary’s wife in 2014.
“When I got to the locker room after the game, I broke down in tears,” said Ryan Kacsur, 32, who also serves as the athletic director at Sto-Rox. “My team looked at me and said, ‘We got you, coach.’ They knew how much that meant to my family and how great it would have been to have my mother there to see us coaching against each other.”
In the Kacsur and Petruska families, the branches on the coaching tree extend beyond the parents and their two sons.
The oldest of Dana Petruska’s three children, Jimmy, used to serve as her assistant and is now in his 11th season as the women’s coach at Saint Vincent College. Kacsur’s daughter, Jena, the youngest of his two children, has been his assistant all five years at Fort Cherry.
Each parent is elated to see the kids, like them, following a passion for coaching.
“When [Jimmy] was in school at Saint Vincent, he used to drive back and forth every day to help me at Mars,” said Dana Petruska, whose husband, Jim, served as her assistant in the early years. “I knew then that the coaching bug had bit. He’s a true student of the game. And my youngest, Dave, is right there. They’re alike, and it makes me feel really good to see them doing what they love to do.”
By far the longest tenured of the four coaches — the Kacsurs are in their first coaching jobs and Dave Petruska is just nine years removed from high school — Dana Petruska is in her second stint at Mars. She coached there for 19 years, left for her alma mater, Deer Lakes, for eight years and is in her second season back at Mars.
She entered her game against Armstrong Thursday night with a 411-270 career record with 18 postseason appearances, a trip to the WPIAL semifinals last season and an appearance in the 2004 championship game.
Dave Petruska, her assistant at Deer Lakes for three seasons before replacing her when she went back to Mars, attended her practices and games since he was a toddler.
He said he knew, as a seventh grader, that coaching was in his future while watching Mars play Knoch for the section championship. In the waning seconds, Dana drew up a play that led to a buzzer-beating basket.
“To see her demand excellence out of that team and to watch them go out and execute that play, it really stuck with me,” said Dave Petruska, a teacher’s aide at Deer Lakes. “That was a building block for me. I knew then that I wanted to be a head coach.”
Ryan Kacsur never saw dad work as a head basketball coach, but Gary served as an assistant when the former played at Montour High. Ryan said dad did a fabulous job of teaching him the game, but the experience went much deeper.
“What I loved most was just knowing that he was going to be there for me,” said the younger Kacsur, who served as a ceremonial assistant at Fort Cherry for the 2014 WPIAL playoffs so mom, very sick at the time, could see him on the bench with his dad and sister. “Being here at Sto-Rox, I see kids whose parents aren’t around. Some don’t have anyone to support them in the stands. I certainly learned a lot about coaching from my dad, with his passion for the game, but it meant the most to me that he was around.
“We get to make an impact as coaches, but more than that, we get to positively influence young people. That, I believe, is the best part of being a coach.”