When Dan Muir was hired to lead Pleasant Valley’s girls’ basketball program, he took over a team that had been led by Nadia Pavuk (Gauronsky), who accepted the girls head coaching position at Jim Thorpe, for the past 11 seasons with great success. Pavuk posted a 145-117 record and qualified for the district playoffs nine times, reaching the semifinals twice (2012, 2014).

Several of the pieces will be different in Muir’s first season at the helm of the Bears, but he knows a strong foundation is already in place, one he has already started to build on despite the difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve been pretty lucky. Even with everything that happened in the spring, we were allowed to get in the gym, so we had workouts all summer and all fall,” said Muir. “So it was good. And that part of it is really important for the program because Coach G (Gauronsky) left the program in a good place, but we’re young.

Our whole staff, we’re coming in and we’re putting our stamp on what we’re going to be doing and how we’re going to play, and it’s really been perfect with all of this practice time that we’re having here. The kids have been totally open and working hard. It’s been awesome so far.”

As the only area school to compete in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference, Pleasant Valley recently had the start of its winter sports seasons delayed until Jan. 15 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bears will have to replace their top four scorers from a team that went 13-10 this past season, falling to eventual champion Nazareth in the quarterfinals of the District 11 Class 6A playoffs.

Cam Caffrey (13.17 points per game, seventh-best among area players), Riley Wagner (8.76), Alyssa Wagner (8.30) and Madison O’Neil (6.09) made up a big chunk of the scoring for a team that averaged 46.26 points per game a year ago.

Muir is looking at a rotation that will consist of seven or eight players to play the majority of the minutes on this season’s team.

“It’s exciting. There are no seniors. So we’re going to have all these kids for a minimum of two years, and most of them three or four,” said Muir. “So it’s really exciting. We have all coached these kids, whether it be youth, fourth, fifth and sixth grade, or seventh and eighth grade. So there is familiarity for the entire staff with the kids, and they all know us, and we know them.”

Junior Samantha Merklin returns after playing in 23 games last season and averaging 4.83 points per game.

Juniors Drew Morgan (1.74) and Maryam Mattson (1.00), along with sophomore Ella Muir (2.36) also return after gaining valuable varsity playing time last season and figure to play key roles in this year’s rotation. Sophomores Jordan Rosenberg and Shannon LaCoe, along with junior Aliyah Williams, also saw varsity action last year

“We may or may not want to push the ball against certain teams, because we definitely have very athletic kids, and the rest of the kids we’re expecting to contribute are athletic as well,” said Muir. “We plan on playing a similar kind of style that we have in the past, because we don’t have a ton of height, but we have athletes.

“So we’re going to play hard; we might be a little more physical than in the past, but we’re going to do that because we don’t have the depth to just run kids in and out. But we will be very similar.”

There are still plenty of unknowns with the start of the season a month away. But Muir will make sure Pleasant Valley is ready for whatever comes next this year and beyond.

“We just want to get better every day,” he said. “We want to compete and get better against all the teams we play against. If we make playoffs this year, that would be a great season for us to build on.

“The future is where it’s going to be at. We just want to grow and work to continue getting better every day.”