By Christopher Tremblay

Staff Sports Writer

 Pat Leslie will be taking over the coaching duties for the Ashland girls’ basketball team this winter, where he hopes to put his spin on things to make the squad relevant once again. 

Last season the Clocker girls were only able to manage a single win during a 20-game season. 

The new Coach, who had played some basketball in Korea for a club team, began his coaching career in Texas as an assistant girls’ basketball coach. He then found himself moving to North Saint Paul, Minn., where he had applied for both the boys’ and girls’ openings; he got the girls’ gig not realizing that they were in a very bad spot.

“I didn’t know that the boys’ job was a coveted position, while the girls had lost 45 straight games,” he said. “I really didn’t know what I had gotten myself into, but here I was.”

Leslie took the winless team to its first win in some time and the girls were able to capture two wins during his first season in North Saint Paul. The following years things would get better – during his second season with the Polars Leslie was able to get his team to win 10 games and just about doubled that with 19 in his third season. During that first year Leslie was also able to guide his team to a win over their rivals, a team that had beaten them by 50 plus points just a year earlier.

Leslie went on to say that the team had success because they bought into his vision, which in his words was kind of an experiment. But to go from 10 to 19 wins (a feat that tied the record for most wins in school history) in only his third season with the team, was above and beyond what he could have expected. As first-year students on the North Saint Paul team the girls were winless, but by their senior campaign they were winning 19 games: an astonishing accomplishment.

Although he was making fantastic strides in Minnesota, he had to leave the state and headed to Massachusetts when his wife got a job here. Having success, he figured that it would be easy to get a head coaching job somewhere in the Bay State. Leslie would have to settle for an assistant coaching job at Arch Bishop Williams before eventually landing the job with Ashland. 

“I am blessed and excited to be coaching the Clockers,” he said. “It was cool how I was able to turn the ship around and into a winning program at Minnesota and am hoping to do the same thing here. I have heard that they play in a tough conference (Tri-Valley League), but it was tough in North Saint Paul too.”

The new Clocker coach has spoken with some of the girls and has received positive vibes from the entire program from top to bottom. He is really excited about the youth program in town, which goes above and beyond.

Leslie has found the enthusiasm in Ashland to be unbelievable; the staff, the parents, the girls they all are on board with his vision and hopefully withing a few years the Clockers could be turning things around.

The coach will be relying heavily on two returning seniors in Vanessa Thompson and Abby Rosenfeld.

“I honestly don’t know much at this stage of the game,” Leslie said. “I do know that there is a lot of potential here and the willingness to work and compete is key.”

Sophomore Ava Vitti, who the new coach believes was the team’s leading scorer last year as a freshman will be back and should be an important piece to the Clocker puzzle.  

He also noted that junior Abby Dever also started a lot last year and he knows that there is a young group of first-year students and sophomores who will give him something to build upon. But again, noted that he can not really single anyone out at this point without being able to see them actually play. 

“The main goal is to get them to compete, first and foremost. Then after learning how to do that we can move on,” he said. “If you work hard and compete on a regular basis everything else will eventually fall into place. We are ‘Clocked In’ everyday to do our best; it’s a challenge each and every day.”

Leslie is looking for his girls to come into practice and close down all their outside thoughts and focus 100 percent of the task at hand; improving the basketball program. Leslie’s dream is not specific, but he enjoys coaching and wants to accomplish things and if the girls follow his command they should begin to see the fruits of their labor.

“I have a vision of what I want to do here and hopefully we’ll be able to accomplish something in year one,” he said. “However, if things need to be adjusted we will adapt to the players we have and their talents.”

While he doesn’t consider himself a miracle worker, he does believe that Ashland is in a good situation with the amount of young talent that he has. He also has seen the hungriness of the girls and knows they are aware of the success the program has had in the past and they are looking to return there.

“I am just a human being here to guide these girls, they are the ones who will have to execute and make things work if they want to be successful,” Leslie said.