Coach remains positive after winless season for Gateway girls

By: John Phillips
Sunday, March 2, 2025 | 11:01 AM

Building a team is a process that takes time. For Gateway girls basketball coach Curtis Williams, the process included some growing pains this past year.

Faced with fielding a very young team, Williams had a tall task assigned to him: Guide a group of inexperienced girls, many of whom were underclassmen, mostly freshman, and teach them how to succeed. Not an easy assignment. One that could break those not up to the challenge.

Williams took the task head on, even though the road ahead was going to be a rocky one with the tough Class 5A schedule the Gators play. When the smoke cleared, the Gators ended their season 0-19.

“Our struggle was going to be scoring,’ Williams said. “If the kids aren’t skilled or developed, scoring 30 points was going to be a challenge. Keeping them engaged was a big goal. This generation is one of instant gratification.”

Despite the challenges he faced in his 10th season at the helm, Williams felt that getting players to understand the process he was teaching was a good first step in their development for future success.

“Essentially, we were trotting out an eighth grade team” said Williams. “We had 10 freshmen. About six or seven of them played major roles. It was a lot of growing pains. The physicality — they were overwhelmed playing at the varsity level.”

That 30-point barometer is one he targeted as a way to gauge how much his team was progressing. It served as a way to see how much progress they made. But Williams found one common theme in each game they played.

“My thoughts were that If we can keep the opponent to 35-38 points, that 30-point level for us keeps us in a one- or even two-possession game” he said. “It came down to one quarter where we would get down 18-2 early or come out of halftime and get outscored by 17-1 and that would be the difference in staying competitive.”

Coming off a season with no wins, Williams still found positives to highlight while the girls begin preparation for the spring workout schedule.

“They did some really good things, winning games at the JV level, and that will hopefully pay some dividends next year,” he said.

“We only had 16 players most of the season, so that was hard. We lost our only starting senior (Rachel Szymanski) towards the end of the year. That didn’t help. The girls got close to 35 games in between the two levels. By the time the season was over, their brains were fried. They still competed and played hard. That shows character, and the girls stayed together despite the lack of success in the win column.”

Williams also stated that their section opponents didn’t make for easy competition.

“They just couldn’t handle the teams, many that had senior-laden clubs,” he said. “Franklin Regional had six seniors. Fox Chapel and a few others had four or five. That’s hard to match when you are so young.”

Despite the bagel in the win column, Williams, who spends his days working for the United States Postal Service, found some silver lining amongst the gray and cloudy results.

“I came out encouraged, not discouraged,” he asserted. “They didn’t let the win-loss column dictate how they played, and they stayed positive throughout, and that’s all you can ask of them.”

Tags: Gateway