BY BRIAN FEESSouthern Tier Sports Report
HORSEHEADS — The Horseheads boys’ basketball team will start the season with a new coach, only the third in over three and a half decades for the Blue Raiders.
Randy Torgalski takes over the Blue Raiders, after the retirement of Jeff Limoncelli.
“A lot of fun,” Torgalski said of taking over the program. “There is a lot of history with this program that goes back years and years. Impressed with the Pittsburgh Steelers, they have had only like 2-3 coaches the last 50 years, that’s Horseheads basketball with two coaches the past 30 or 40 years with coach (Steve) Monks and coach Lim, so honored to take the helm from those guys and hopefully we can keep things rolling with what’s expected from Horseheads basketball. The effort, the energy and the level of play.”
Torgalski takes over a program known for how well they do the fundamentals, and that’s something the new coach plans to continue preaching.
“That’s one thing I’ve always stressed and focused on is the fundamentals,” Torgalski said. “Attention to detail, little things make the big things happen, so we are going to be stressing all the ltitle things the next couple of weeks as we head up to opening day.”
The Blue Raiders have a roster Torgalski is excited to work with.
“I like it,” he said. “We’ve got a nice mix of some young guys, some veterans back from last year who are ready to take on a bigger role. I think it will be a nice, competitive team. I think we will be a little deeper than we’ve been, which is nice to see so we can wear some teams down.
“Not a lot of experience, but they are hungry for a chance now. We have some young kids who are ready to play and give us some youthful energy, it will be fun.”
Horseheads knows they’ll face some tough competition in the STAC.
“Being with the program the last couple of years, I got to see a little bit and we’ve definitely got some challenges within the STAC,” Torgalski said. “Ithaca, Elmira, Corning, we play them each twice, those aren’t fun nights. That’s six nights I won’t catch much sleep on, but we’ll have some fun and we’ll play hard.”
With a younger roster the goal will be to be playing their best basketball as the season goes on.
“Introducing a lot of new things to the team and how we want to play and what we want to do, so it’s going to take a few weeks,” Torgalski said. “We are going to go through some growing pains, but that’s part of the deal. We want to be playing our best ball in January and February anyways.”
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PHOTOS BY BRIAN FEES
PHOTO GALLERY FROM PRACTICE:
