Blackhawk's Huston selected at Times' 2023-24 Coach of the Year

CHIPPEWA — Just one year ago, Blackhawk girls' basketball head coach Greg Huston debated whether to take the vacant head coaching position after former Lady Cougars' head coach Steve Lodovico resigned after the 2022-23 season.

But after some convincing, Huston applied and was hired on May 11 and proceeded to do what only a coach would dream of doing in their first year with a program which is to win a state championship.

With his success throughout his first season at the helm at Blackhawk, Huston has been named the Times’ 2023-24 Coach of the Year.

This past year has been a wild one for Huston who had a tough decision to make whether or not he even wanted to accept the position with the Blackhawk coaching staff after he resigned as the Beaver Area girls' basketball coach just a year earlier to spend more time with his family.

But after some convincing from friends and family, Huston knew that this was an opportunity he could not pass up.

“After resigning from Beaver, I just wanted to relax and just watch my kids play," Huston told the Beaver County Times. "The opportunity came up and thankfully some people gave me some good advice and talked me into applying for the job and it kind of all worked out from there. I knew that the team that I was coming in to lead was great because of what they have accomplished before, I was just happy to show up and keep it rolling.”

Huston has been around the game of basketball for a long time and had the opportunity to play in a few state championship games and teams that found a lot of success as a player during his high school days at Blackhawk.

But now as a coach, the experience throughout the regular and postseason was completely different from when he was playing back in high school.

“As a coach, that feeling was on a completely different level and it meant a lot more to me as an adult and as a coach because you see what it takes to do it," Huston said. "This was a great group of kids that I had the opportunity to coach and I came into a good situation and I don’t want to take more credit than I should because there was such a great support system here already.”

That success that Huston saw in the ladder half of the regular season and the postseason did not come easy as Blackhawk experienced some setbacks early on in the season before hitting its stride.

For the Blackhawk community from the outside looking in, it wasn’t easy for some to watch the struggles early on in the season with the success that the team had under former head coach Steve Lodovico who won four WPIAL Championships and two state titles in his 18-year tenure.

But Huston said that his team never lost focus and did not press over the tough first month of the season.

“We had some rough goings early on in the season. In our first couple of games, we ended up winning but we struggled in those games," Huston said. "We lost to McKeesport by about 20 points and people were starting to get a little antsy and starting to get worried. But within the group and the team, we never lost sight of what we wanted to set out and do.

"I told the girls that there were going to be growing pains because things were different from what they were before.”

That month of December featured eight tough nonconference games against several 5A and 6A schools in the WPIAL including games against a tough McKeesport team and Kennedy Catholic who won the PIAA Class 2A title this past season as well.

Those games helped the Cougars grow stronger and once section play began, Blackhawk hit its stride going on an impressive run posting a perfect 10-0 record in section play which led the team to secure the top seed in the WPIAL Class 4A playoffs and at the end of the season, the team finished with an impressive 27-3 record.

After rolling through the early rounds of the WPIAL playoffs, the Cougars would drop a heartbreaker to North Catholic in the WPIAL championship game by a final score of 40-37 .

Even though it was a rough showing from Huston and his team, he believed that it was the wake-up call that the team needed as they headed into the state playoffs.

“It was tough to drop that game to North Catholic,” Huston said. “We felt like we were the better team heading into the game but we did not put our best performance out there. At the same time, that loss was also a good wake-up call for us heading into the state playoffs because, in some weird way, it was a good way to motivate us and prepare us for the state playoff run.”

Blackhawk would then go on a tear in the state playoffs rattling off five straight wins outscoring its opponents 263-165 in route to its fifth state title in program history.

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When looking back at the run that the team went on in the state playoffs, Huston didn’t want to describe the title run as magical. But the way that the team showed resilience after the WPIAL championship loss and how the Lady Cougars competed against some of the best teams in the state, it was hard to not think of it as a magical run.

“I felt like we played our best basketball those five games in the state playoffs,” Huston said. “We were laser-focused, our game plans were sharp, the girls went out and executed, our defense was incredible and we were hitting on all cylinders. Those girls bounced back after the WPIAL Championship loss and put it all out there. I do not like to use the word magical to describe the way that we played but it was in some sense because we played as well as we could play for five straight games and that is not an easy thing to do.”

One of the main reasons why Huston took the coaching position at Blackhawk was to be able to coach his daughter Grace who is a sophomore guard on the team.

Huston was happy that he was able to share the state title moment with his daughter and his family.

“If Grace didn’t play or didn’t go to Blackhawk, I would not have taken this job,” Huston said. “Someone told me along the way when I was debating on whether to apply or not that I would regret not working with my daughter. That stuck with me. That piece of advice propelled me to apply in the first place so I was thankful for that person because it was really special to share that moment with her."

Along with his daughter, Huston also had the opportunity to coach two all-state players Aubree Hupp and Alena Fusetti who played a key role in the team’s dominant run in the state playoffs.

Fusetti’s senior leadership and Hupp's substantial growth in the late parts of the season made Huston's job coaching the Blackhawk program in his first year a memorable one.

“You know that you are getting their best every day and I can’t say enough about them. Alena and her senior leadership and what she was able to do were outstanding. Aubree just continued to grow every single game and once we got to the state playoffs, she was just dominating every matchup she got.”

Along with the two all-state talents junior guard Andrea Kinger held the group together when she was out on the floor and Huston believed that she was one of the best guards in the WPIAL by the way she was able to command the offense on the court.

As Huston reflects on the past year, he is grateful to have had the opportunity to coach this program to a PIAA state title in his first season and made memories he will not soon forget.

“It is really hard to believe what transpired throughout the season,” Huston said. “I knew that this team was a good team coming into the job but for things to work out the way that they did, it was a really special thing for myself, my daughter and my entire family.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Blackhawk's Huston selected at Times' 2023-24 Coach of the Year