City of Basketball Love

Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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After four years as the head coach at Springside-Chestnut Hill Academy, Jamie Chadwin is leaving to take over the same position at Radnor High School.

Chadwin takes over for Chris Monahan, who resigned as Radnor’s coach late in July.

“I was interested in it, I knew just the people in the Radnor community...and also the Central League, one of the premier leagues in basketball around,” Chadin said by phone Friday morning. “I live in the Main Line, in Ardmore, (the) logistics were  something that interested me.”

At SCH Academy, Chadwin had a tough time getting enough talented players to the school to keep up with the rest of the Inter-Ac’s basketball powerhouses like Germantown Academy and Episcopal Academy. Over his four years there, the Blue Devils went 30-69 (.303), and just 4-36 in Inter-Ac competition.

It’ll be quite a different atmosphere going from the small private school to the public school, which is in PIAA’s new 6A classification, the biggest in the station.

“Certainly the recruiting aspect is not there (at Radnor), so that’s different and that’s going to be something, I think for me, that I can look forward to,” Chadwin said. “I can spend my time in different ways, focused on the program rather than trying to attract families to a school. So that’s something that interested me and attracted me to the job.”

In the Central League, Chadwin will have just as much work cut out for him.

He’ll have to go up regularly against perennial district championship contenders Lower Merion, Ridley and Conestoga on a regular basis, not to mention other strong programs like Penncrest, Strath Haven, Garnet Valley and more.

“As a coach, you always want to see how well you can prepare your program against the other great programs,” he said. “It definitely will force development of a program -- if not, you don’t succeed...it’s a welcome challenge, it’s fun to try to see how well-prepared we can be.”

The Red Raiders finished last year in seventh place in the conference with a 6-10 record, and have to replace two college-bound players in point guard Mike Li (Caltech) and forward Jacob Bodenger (Catholic U).

Chadwin will have to lean heavily on seniors Mason Ressler, a 6-4 wing, plus guards Sami Ghazzi and Jack Thompson; sophomore Vernon Harper, a 6-3 forward, should also factor in heavily.

“From what I understand, there’s some tremendous athletes at the school and maybe some that haven’t been involved in basketball, that might be able to strengthen the depth of the program,” Chadwin said. “I don’t know the specifics, as far as skill sets and strengths of the group, and that’s going to be probably my biggest focus of the next two months, to get to know the strengths and the attributes of the kids individually; the athleticism, the skill level, developmentally, what they come from, what they know. And then start to construct our plan, how we want to use that when practice officially starts.”