SOURCE: BERND FRANKE - Welland Tribune
Taking a year off from playing isn't expected to diminish Kianna Klauck's basketball IQ all that much. If anything, spending time on the sidelines coaching senior elementary students should give the 21-year-old from Port Colborne an even greater court sense when she resumes her post-secondary career with the Niagara College women's basketball team in the fall.
Mike Beccaria, the team's head coach, suggested the coaching experience with Port Colborne Youth Basketball should benefit Klauck, who last played competitively at Virginia Wesleyan, a Division III school in Viriginia Beach, Va. He said players who have coached have a better understanding of what they need to do and can appreciate when they make a mistake." It makes my position easier, because she will know what I'm taking about," he said after welcoming the latest recruit to the 2014-15 team.
Klauck agreed that Beccaria won't need to repeat himself all that often when he talks to her at practices and in timeouts next season.
"I now kind of understand how coaches see things," she said of how coaching the Grade 7 and 8 students will help her as a player. Klauck, who returned home after a year in Virginia to be close to her dying grandfather, said finding herself on the other end of the whistle rekindled her passion for the sport."
It definitely sparked my interest. I wanted to jump right in there and do it for myself," added the 6-foot-3 centre.
She spent this year at majoring in pre-media at Niagara after studying biology at Virginia Wesleyan. In September she will begin taking the broadcasting program at the college in hopes of a career on the production side of TV broadcasting. "Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to get into medicine but the theories got to be too much. I'm more of a hands-on learner, so the course at Niagara is perfect for me."
While Klauck hasn't been challenged on the court since the 2012-13 season at Viriginia Wesleyan, Beccaria isn't concerned an accumulation of rust will slow her down on the court.
"I'm not worried as much as she is. We have four months to get ready.The second-year coach expects Klauck will be an "impact player immediately for us," thanks to her year of seasoning south of the border. "They teach the game well down there. They do a good job fundamentally."
bernd.franke@sunmedia.ca
