Park Middle Teacher Ready for New Gig as High School Girls Basketball Coach

There is no one more excited about the upcoming basketball season than first-year Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School girls' coach Jennifer Ryan.

The former Plainfield High School and Pace University standout had to wait some time before getting back into coaching and now that she has been given another opportunity she is about to make the most of it.

"Once you coach you always want to get back into it," said Ryan, who is now guiding a young Raider squad that has potential. "I love it. The whole thought of it gives me goose bumps. That's what sports are all about, giving kids an opportunity."

Ryan comes from a basketball background within her family, with her father, John, having been a coach and her husband, Jack, a basketball entertainer.

Ryan, a Scotch Plains resident and a Resource Teacher at Park Middle School, takes over the reigns from Bruce Davis, who guided the Raiders to the 2007 Union County Tournament championship and the 2008 and 2009 UCT semifinals.

Already involved with athletics as a sports coordinator at Park Middle School, Ryans decided to apply for the coaching position when it became available. She was officially hired at the end of June.

With her daughter Morgan, 5, now in Kindergarten at J. Ackerman Coles Elementary School, that made it possible for Ryan to give coaching a shot again.

"My daughter can experience the whole athletic forum now," said Ryan, who graduated from Plainfield in 1984 as Jennifer DiMaggio.

Ryan, 43, was a forward at Plainfield and a starting member of the varsity team her sophomore, junior and senior seasons of 1982, 1983 and 1984 after making varsity and playing briefly as a freshman in 1981.

Plainfield was the dominant team in Union County back then, winning the UCT all four years Ryan was at the school. She, unfortunately, missed her junior season because of a broken thumb suffered in a pre-season scrimmage that year at Atlantic City.

One of her years both the Plainfield boys' and girls' teams played at the Meadowlands in Group 4 state championship games.

The girls' squad was coached by Harry Lambert.

"We had a great run in the county tournament back then," Ryan said.

Plainfield got back to the UCT final last year for the first time since the 1980s.

Scotch Plains will host Plainfield in its season-opener Dec. 18 at 4 p.m.

"It's quite ironic that our first game will be against Plainfield," Ryan said.

After Plainfield, it was on to Pace University after Ryan was recruited by former highly-successful Morris Catholic mentor John Olenowski to play forward at the Pleasantville, N.Y. school. Ryan played for Olenowski for one year.

Like Ryan, Olenowski got back into coaching this year and is now the head coach of the women's team at Manhattan College.

"John is one of my favorite guys and a great, great coach," Ryan said.

To give you some kind of inclination as to what kind of standout player Ryan was at Pace, she is still the school's all-time leading scorer and rebounder and was also a two-time Kodak All-America selection there her junior and senior seasons of 1986-87 and 1987-88.

Ryan then began her coaching career as an assistant at Pace following graduation in 1988.

Her only other head coaching position was at Hastings High School in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She was the head coach there for the 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons.

"We had winning seasons both years and my second year we made it to the state sectionals," Ryan said.

With all of her coaching experience in New York, Ryan's last coaching stint was for three years in the Lakeland School District in Westchester. She coached junior varsity and freshman teams up until six years ago.

She then spent one year coaching a start-up program at a cottage high school in New York near Hastings High School.

"It was an alternative school and the last year that I taught at the school we were able to begin a junior varsity program," Ryan said.

The school now has a varsity program.

"Basketball has been my life," Ryan said. "After college I played a year in Portugal. Getting another job coaching has always been a part of me."

Ryan explained that her husband, Jack, performs for the Harlem Wizards, that her sister Lisa attended Union Catholic and played basketball there her freshman year and that her father was a 1,000-point scorer at Wagner College and also coached basketball.

 "It's in my blood," she said. "I look forward to coaching these girls and having success here."