A full roster will return for the Georgetown girls’ basketball team in the upcoming season, but a new face will be leading them.
Andrew Gill was named head coach of the Lady G-Men last Tuesday. He’ll be taking over for Janel Blankespoor, who was hired as a women’s basketball assistant coach and director of compliance at Wilmington College earlier this summer.
“I’m looking forward to it,” said Gill. “I’m excited about it and can’t wait for the season to come.”
Before Blankespoor’s season as Georgetown’s coach, the Lady G-Men were led by Bernie Cropper for 21 seasons. During his time, the team won 372 games, 17 league titles, 13 sectional titles, two district titles and made an appearance in the regional finals.
Gill doesn’t feel nervous coming into the new position, however. He just wants to keep that winning tradition going.
“I don’t feel any pressure at all. I’m just going to come in and do what I know and go from there,” said Gill. “It’s been a very successful program over the years and my job is to keep it a successful program.”
He’ll have an experienced group to try to do that. Georgetown’s team had no seniors last year. They’ll be returning two rising seniors, including the top two scorers on the team in Kennedy Underwood and Kim Seigla, from the team that went 7-16 a season ago.
Underwood led the team with 8.4 points and 8.5 rebounds per game last year, while Seigla added another eight points per game.
“No seniors last year, so everybody’s coming back. We’re going to have kids – a junior and senior class with two or three years of varsity experience under their belt,” said Gill. “That’s huge at the varsity level, that experience.”
Gill met with the team and their parents last Thursday afternoon and plans to have some workouts a little later in the summer. He comes in with experience at a variety of levels the last seven years at Western Brown, including being the varsity assistant last year. He played at North Adams under Dave Young, who he says inspired him to get into coaching.
“Coach Dave Young always made me want to be a coach when I got older. I saw this position open and Georgetown has had a rich tradition in recent years so I applied,” said Gill. “It’s a great opportunity.”
Gill wants to take his all-out mentality from his playing days under Young and get his Lady G-Men to buy into it, which is what he says he told superintendent Chris Burrows, principal Jerry Underwood and athletic director Doug Williams in the interview for the position.
“Like I told the three in the interview, I want to coach the way I played. I like to play fast and hard-nosed, give it all you’ve got type thing,” said Gill. “That team – there’s not a lot of size, so we’re going to have to use quickness to our advantage. The big thing with me as well is defense. I’m a defensive guy.”
The first-year Georgetown coach is aiming to get them back to the top of the Southern Buckeye Athletic and Academic Conference and make a run through the postseason. It’ll start with a scrimmage against North Adams, which is scheduled for Nov. 17, before they travel to Blanchester to open the regular season and SBAAC play on Nov. 29.
Gill currently serves as a juvenile probation officer for Brown County Juvenile/Probate Court, a job he has held since 2011. Prior to that he was a probate court clerk and from December of 2007 through November of 2009 was an ongoing case worker with Brown County Job & Family Services.
He holds a Bachelor Degree in Social Science from Shawnee State University.
Throughout his coaching career he has served as an assistant coach for the Western Brown High School softball team, an eighth grade girls basketball coach at Mt. Orab Middle School, an assistant varsity girls basketball coach, and a freshman girls basketball coach.
Wade Linville, News Democrat sports editor, and Jared MacDonald, Champion Media reporter, combined to bring you this story.
