Shinsky Ready for Challenge
Adam Shinsky knows there’s more to a story than a team’s record. As a basketball coach, he sees it on a daily basis in practice. And when tasked with scouting, he must look past the numbers and statistics to get to the heart of what makes a team tick. Shinsky, until recently a seven-year long veteran assistant for the Wheeling Central Maroon Knights, went to scout St. Clairsville against Brooke. The Bruins’ program, to put it plainly, is in a slump. Brooke has two winning seasons in the last 13, most recently in 2014. They’ve won two sectional games in the last 20 years and haven’t reached the state tournament since 1994. Their last first-team all-state player was state player of the year Matt Gaudio in 1991. But what Shinsky saw on the court didn’t match-up visually with a team supposedly mired in losing. “They haven’t won a lot the last two years, but I watched them beat St. Clairsville,” Shinsky said. “It shocked me they were only a three-win team. There is a lot of young talent there. You can tell when a team is defeated because they will roll over and give another win away. “That’s not what I saw in their faces. They had the athleticism and the drive to do what needed to be done.” That is one of a number of reasons that Shinsky felt putting in for the vacant Brooke coaching job was the right move for him. The school board agreed and recently announced Shinsky as its head coach. Read the full article