I interviewed Coach Lance! – Coaches With Kate #1
Coaches with Kate: Mr. Lantz
Okay, so recently I had the chance to sit and chat with Coach Lantz about his 2024 girls basketball season, and what he sees as the future for Padua basketball. Here’s what he had to say…
K: Who are your biggest coaching influences?
L: My biggest coaching influence was a guy named Joe Harold. He was my highschool basketball coach. He’s probably the one that influenced me the most to want to start coaching basketball.
K: What is the most important lesson you learned from him?
L: Hard work will be rewarded. And just because you work hard doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get things handed to you. He taught me a lot about like dealing with adversity and working your way through it and not giving up and being resilient.
K: Where do you see our girls basketball program going in the next few years?
L: We’re trending in the right direction as I like to say. I think we’ve got quality people and quality basketball players and so that doesn’t necessarily always translate to having a good team, but I think it will in this case just because of the culture we are attempting to continue to create.
K: What are some things you think went well this season and other things you’d like to work on for next season?
L: Things went well. We started kind of rough but we were young and people were in different roles this year. As they continued to play and gain experience and confidence with one another things got a lot better. Two of the teams we lost to played down in Columbus and were in the final four but there are some things we could improve on for me personally from a coaching standpoint. Communication is always something I think I can always continue to improve on. It’s so important in coaching since it helps role identification and making sure the girls understand what their role is, their position and how they can help the team. So communication would be one. I think we need to be in better shape this year, maybe run a little more in practice to improve things. And look, we have to continue to improve our strength and footwork because with our strength conditioning program it also stabilizes our knees. We had two pretty rough injuries this year. Two girls tore their ACL and that’s obviously something we never want to deal with so yeah. One of the things we did well I think was we improved our culture this year. Things got better. I loved coaching this squad because they just wanted to show up and work hard, you know. But they played unselfishly and they moved the basketball well, but I want to continue to scaffold and build on the things that we learned and take it into a little more in depth with their understanding of different schemes offensively and defensively.
K: What is one quality that you look for in players when choosing teams and deciding varsity and JV?
L: Aggressive. So my daughter’s in 5th grade and we were putting together a new team for 5th graders and my buddy’s coaching and helping me out with that. We were talking about what players we were gonna try to bring together. The first thing I said to him was “We gotta find players who are gonna be aggressive and that aren’t afraid to go out and give it everything they’ve got and not be afraid of either success or failure.” So I think aggressiveness is important and it’s also important to find those players who are gonna listen and do what you want them to do. Obviously listening skills are so important, because I do believe that a group that plays together, wins together. And if there’s no personal agendas within that team then your opportunities to succeed greatly increases, but if you have selfish players in there then it can ruin it you know what I mean?
K: Who do you think on the team are some promising underclassmen and then also some good leaders on the team?
L: So the underclassmen: Sophia Spade – She’s a freshman and will be a sophomore next year. She was first team All League and was honorable mention All Ohio. So somebody to build around. Ella Figliano’s another incoming sophomore that was second team All League. Generally, our freshman class this year was sound. We got a good group, they all work hard. Ally Krayzel, the Bodamer twins, Rosh, Natalia Torres; so in general, I like our group. Ally Tonsing is an incoming Junior and got second team All League. She’s definitely a player on the rise. Ashley Rypiak, Darlene Jaidah are also players. But you know we had a pretty sound sophomore group too with Leah Neace, Maddie Rees, and Sophia Martin, just to name a few. Kate Minchak might have the best overall shooting form in the program. Then we step up to the incoming seniors: Michela Cario’s been there for us pretty much from day one. I know her the best. She’s a great kid and someone I really have leaned on and relied on to help with our culture. I’m gonna give her credit for turning things around culture wise. Then we got Emma Tackas, Maggie Smith, just quality people, and like I said I do believe you win with people and not necessarily talent all the time.
K: Now some questions focused more on the game of basketball itself: If you could change one rule in the game which one would it be?
L: Shot Clock: I would love to see a shot clock at the High School level. It’s a pet peeve of mine when we would play teams that’d stall. They’d hold the ball for minutes and minutes and minutes and just play keep-away. It’s a winning strategy that coaches can employ and I understand that but for me it’s more about the game and playing the game. In my opinion, stalling is not really part of the game.
K: What impact do you think Caitlin Clark has made on Women’s Basketball? She has brought so much more focus to Women’s College Basketball than in the past.
L: I mean she has had a huge impact. Listen, just to put it in perspective I could probably count on three fingers the amount of basketball games my wife has watched outside of Padua. She’s not a basketball fan; she grew up with hockey in her family. But listen, she is following Caitlin Clark: She’s giving me her stats. She came to me and said, “Do you know what today is? It’s Caitlin Clark’s debut!” So it’s been awesome. And it’s such a beautiful thing, because a lot of times I do think that girls sports kind of get the cold shoulder compared to the boys sports and there are countless examples I can give to back up that statement. But look, the ticket price for the championship game was more than the boys. And the views for the girls game was astronomical and higher than the boys team. So yeah I think she’s been awesome for the sport. I know I use my wife as a reference but my daughters too; we watch all her games so it’s going to be sweet.
K: Who is one pro basketball player- womens or mens- who you would’ve loved to coach in highschool?
L: From the past, I would’ve loved to coach somebody like Michael Jordan. Just because of his talent and his mentality. Kobe Bryant’s another one I would’ve loved to have coached. Caitlin Clark too. And to go old school girl’s basketball: someone like Candace Parker or Cheryl Miller, Reggie Miller’s sister, who was another one I watched. She won a gold medal and was the first female to dunk in a game. So those are just some and here again I would love to coach those who have the talent and have the mentality. Because when you get those two things together it’s special.
K: One final question: Who in your opinion is the GOAT?
L: Michael Jordan: I mean it’s not even close. And I say that just because of the mentality of that player. MJ never passed up the last shot, he always took it. He never blamed things on other people and he took accountability and responsibility for his own play. He wasn’t a blamer, wasn’t a finger pointer. So I would say, my Mount Rushmore would probably be
MJ’s, Kobe would probably be #2, I might tie Lebron with Wilt Chamberlain, because Wilt has crazy stats. So that’d be my Mount Rushmore.
