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Sports

Marshall Coach Leaving After 9-years For South County

Noel Klippenstein will continue to teach at Marshall, ready to lead new team.

April Henson had a brand new tattoo to show to her brand new coach. Henson, a freshman basketball player at South County High School, later revealed that the tattoo was temporary, but her new coach is here to stay.

South County High School introduced Noel Klippenstein, as the new girl’s varsity basketball coach on Thursday, and Klippenstein was immediately taken in by Henson’s sense of humor, in her first meeting with the team.

For the last nine-years, Klippenstein served as the head coach at George Marshall High. She led the Statesmen to district titles in 2006 and 2007, but will take over a Stallions team that is about to graduate 8 seniors, including four starters from a squad that went 17-5 this season. Klippenstein, who lives in Centreville, will continue to teach at Marshall.

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“She brings a lot of experience, we really like her energy, her enthusiasm and we think she’s going to be a great coach for us,” said Mike Pflugrath, South County’s Director of Student Activities.

Despite the challenges that will come with shepherding a very young team, Klippenstein is eager to work with some of the talented players she’s about to inherit.

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“Angela Banks is a returning starter.  She’ll be a senior- I coached her on an AAU team called the Vogues a couple years ago, so I’m really excited about coaching her again,” said Klippenstein. “I thought she was a really strong player, she hustles on the boards, and plays the post to perfection.”

Klippenstein met the rest of her new players on Thursday for the first time, and was immediately struck by the group’s esprit de corps.

“They seemed like a really close team, and it was easy to get them talking, which is a good thing, because if you can get them talking to each other, then they’ll communicate better on the court,” she said.

Henson will be one of the underclassmen Klippenstein will be counting on next season.  As a freshman she averaged more than twenty points per game on the JV squad this season, and some believe that she could have been playing varsity.

Klippenstein will replace Chrissy Kelly, who resigned after leading the team to three consecutive winning seasons. Kelly will stay on as a Physical Education teacher at the school.  Pflugrath said that he thought she resigned because she simply “needed a break.” Kelly helped mold winning teams but also ruffled some feathers with her intense approach.

Because she’ll be inheriting a young team, she’s likely to take a different approach with this group than she would with a veteran team.

“For the younger ones, you need to be more patient and more deliberate- telling them, and teaching them what they need to know,” she said. “You have to teach and show them and practice everything over and over. But if you get to them early, then you can watch them grow as they progress over the rest of their high school careers.”

Tryouts for the team won’t begin until mid-November, but in her first meeting with the team, Klippenstein could tell that her team was already raring to go.

“I asked them who they wanted to beat and they came up with a lot of names- and then one of them said, ‘we want to beat everyone.’ I liked that.”

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