Kain able to take over Hall hoops job
SPRING VALLEY — Hall High School continued to add another piece to its coaching puzzle Wednesday, naming Dave Kain as the new varsity girls’ basketball coach during the school board meeting.
Kain was a volunteer varsity assistant for two seasons under former head coach Pat Cinotte, who resigned at the end of the season. Cinotte has been named as head women’s coach at IVCC.
Kain was approved by an unanimous vote of the school board.
“He knows his stuff. He’s very highly qualified and will do a good job,” said board member Jack Boroski.
Hall Superintendent Mike Struna said having been in the program will be a plus for Kain.
“He knows what were doing with the program, and the girls and the girls know him. We think he will do well,” Struna said.
Kain will take over running the summer program Monday. He said assistant coach Darcy Early, who was also a finalist for the head job, has done a great job running it so far.
“It’s going to be exciting. It’s going to be a good thing. We’ve lost three good seniors, but we got some talent coming back. We should be a competitive,” Kain said.
Kain, 49, said he hopes to continue the success Cinotte had and will be bringing in some fresh ideas. He has coached AAU girls' basketball in the summer and boys' and girls' basketball teams at Peru Washington.
The former Mendota Trojan (Class of 1978) played for two Trojan coaches, Bob Beals and Sam Snuffin, who had different philosophies to the game, he said, adding he’s taken a little bit away from both.
“Bob was offensive minded, push the ball up the floor and shoot. Sam was defensive-minded, from the Bobby Knight school where they can’t score,” he said.
The new Hall skipper will inherit a program on the heels of a NCIC Lincoln championship, one that will be rebuilding with the graduation of seniors Erin Polte, Carly Prokup and Lynsday Wallaert, all of whom will continue their athletic career in college. One of the Lady Devils the new coach will build around is his daughter, Jaclyn, a returning sophomore varsity letterwinner.
Cinotte said the program will be in good hands with Kain.
“It’s exciting to have an assistant coach take over your program. I feel the program would have been in good hands with either coach Kain or coach Early,” he said. “I wish them all the luck and the Lady Red Devils.”
Cinotte questioned why the new coach wasn’t named sooner, so he/she could have had time to prepare for summer leagues.
“I gave them plenty of time to hire somebody before summer leagues. I thought it could have got done a lot quicker,” he said.
Also Wednesday, the board approved the hiring of two assistant volleyball coaches, Debbie Brokaw, who has been volleyball coach at Cherry Grade School, and Jessica Strouss, volleyball coach at Spring Valley JFK Elementary. They will work under newly-hired head varsity coach Dani Zellmer, who replaces, Demi Salazar.
Other coaching hires for next year at Hall include varsity football coach Jason Bland, head varsity girls' track coach Nick Hanck and girls’ soccer coach Harlan Franklin. Bland and Hanck fill the void created by the retirement of longtime coach Gary Vicini.
BCR correspondent Neil Johnson contributed to this article.
