PCHS Miners girls basketball game changers

Park City High School varsity basketball. Photo: Gene Gallin

PARK CITY, Utah — The Park City High School (PCHS) Miners girls basketball coaching staff being mostly women, hope to translate into mostly winning results. the program has promising plans for a milestone season.

Having more female coaches has translated into more female players on Miners’ basketball courts than ever before.

The D1 women’s basketball players, now PCHS coaches, Julie Hunter (Georgetown) and Jane Meade, have, in the words of one team mom, Jan Mitchell, “made the girls happy on and off the court.”

These two coaches, along with other varsity and freshman girls basketball coaches, including Brett Isaacson and Darrin Bivens, are changing the game as far as rostering trends.

The program places a new focus on development before the girls get to high school, which had never been done before. Female athletes used to play on a boy’s team or drive to Salt Lake City if they wanted more than a rec. league girls team, and these coaches have changed that.

Hunter put her time in coaching girls and boys basketball in the Rec. League and still coaches the 8th-grade boy’s team. Girls are playing younger, longer, and with access to better coaching, which they all hope translates into the teams having more success.

It used to be that anyone could make the team, and they could barely field the four teams with lots of kids playing on two teams each week. They have to make cuts fielding the most girls ever try out this year.

Overall, the PCHS Varsity girls basketball team is 2 – 0, beating Kearns and Ben Lomond at home.

Another home game is coming up tonight versus Stansbury, with the Freshmen starting their game at 5:15 and Varsity at 7:00. The Varsity girls play basketball in Salt Lake City at Cottonwood High School on Thursday.

The JV team travels to the Salt Lake Valley a week from today to take on Summit Academy for their next match-up.