Friday, July 18, 2008 11:09 PM CDT
Former LLC standout named Martinsville girls' basketball coach
By MIKE MONAHAN, Staff Writer
mmonahan@jg-tc.com
MARTINSVILLE -- Robin (Downs) Karras, who has been the Martinsville athletics director for the past year, is also to be the girls’ basketball coach for the Lady Bluestreaks. Karras was hired by the Martinsville school board Thursday.
Karras served as a volunteer coach last year under Doug Dahnke and Barry Wolfe in the 25-3 season.
“I have been to Martinsville games since I was a kid,” said Karras. “I have known Barry (Wolfe) and Doug (Dahnke) for a long time and I knew they wanted to watch their kids play at a different level. I know the kids at the school and I am looking forward to coaching.”
Karras replaced Dahnke, whose daughter Heidi was the Journal-Gazette/Times-Courier Player of the Year for two straight years and is to play at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dahnke coached Martinsville for four years along with assistant coach Barry Wolfe, whose daughter Brittany is to play at Greenville College. Martinsville was a co-op with Casey-Westfield in 2001-02, 2002-03 and 03-04 after having its own team in 1999-2000 and 2000-01.
Dahnke, who considered Wolfe his co-coach, finished with an 83-28 record, back-to-back Little Illini Conference tournament titles and a regular season co-Little Illini Conference crown.
“I am officially a bleacher bum,” said Dahnke. “Most of Heidi’s game are on Thursday or Saturday and I wouldn’t be a good coach on a Thursday night with my mind on her game. I thought this was the best time to do it. I am not saying I might do it later. I am going to be busy being a dad and see that it is like from the bleachers for a while. In five years when Heidi is done I will still be young enough if I want to coach again “
Karras scored 1,196 points at Lake Land and was coached by Dwight Perry, who was recently the Mattoon girls’ basketball coach. At one time Downs had the school record for most points in a career, breaking former Mattoon standout Jana Martens’ record of 1,044 points set between 1987-89. Karras set the record on Feb. 15, 1993 in a 101-87 loss to Parkland. Karras also pulled down 23 rebounds in the game, which tied for the school record for the most boards in one game. Karras also made 25 free throws in one game in scoring 39 points in an 81-73 win over Lincoln Trail.
After Lake Land Karras was recruited by Evansville, but the coach (Bill Barnett) quit and Downs transferred to Southern Illinois where she practiced for one year with the team as she had to sit out do to NCAA transfer rules. Downs played one exhibition game the year after that before stopping play due to a heart condition, which is now not a problem.
Karras, a Terre Haute North graduate who played at Marshall before moving, was assistant women’s basketball coach at Rose-Hulman in 2006-07, where her husband Tony is the defensive line coach, special teams coach and recruiting coordinator. She was also an assistant cross country coach for the Fightin’ Engineers and was a track coach at Paris and taught at Effingham, where she coached at the freshman-sophomore and junior high level. She earned her masters in administration from Eastern Illinois University and earned her bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Karras teaches high school and junior high English at Martinsville as well as speech.
Martinsville losses seven players from last year’s team, but could return as many as 10.
“We have a couple of solid kids coming back,” said Karras. “The biggest thing going against us the lack of varsity experience. We do have some kids that have not been in basketball in the last couple of years. The strongest kids should be seniors and we have a couple of junior high kids coming. I want to see the program continue. It is not very often that you have seven seniors anywhere let alone on a school of this size (137). To fill those shoes is going to be difficult. I think these girls want to play together and they are good kids to be around and they work hard.”
This season is the first one that Martinsville is to compete in the Little Okaw Valley Conference in basketball after being in the Little Illini Conference for a number of years.
“It is a completely different schedule,” said Karras. “I think we can compete in the LOVC. The decision was made before I got to Martinsville, but I think girls’ and boys’ basketball will compete and probably better than we did in the LIC.”
Karras and her husband and sons Marcus (eight) and seven and a half month old Luke live in Marshall.
Contact Mike Monahan at mmonahan@jg-tc.com or 238-6854.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
