New coach brings experience
By: Bob Nuse
Kyle Zosulis had been out of coaching long enough. So when the boys’ basketball job opened up at Princeton Day school, he saw it as a perfect chance to get back into coaching.
"I got out of it for a little while," said Zosulis, who takes over for Ahmed El-Nokali as the Panthers’ head coach. "My job is in Piscataway and the commute to get to Bristol (where he had been coaching) and then back home to East Windsor was just too much. We also have a couple of children and it got to the point where it was too much.
"When the PDS job opened up, I thought it would be a perfect situation for me. It was local and coaching at the prep school level was something that was exciting to me."
Zosulis has made a number of coaching stops in his career, all in Pennsylvania prior to the PDS job. He has coached at Council Rock High (his alma mater), as well as Bucks County Community College and Truman High. Those experiences should help him as he takes over a PDS program that won seven games last year after reaching the state Prep B finals the year before.
"I’ve coached a lot of places," said Zosulis, who played at Council Rock and then at Kings College in Wilkes Barre, Pa. "We do not have a lot of numbers, but the kids we have come and work hard every day. They bring the effort that you need to bring every day to be successful.
"I’m excited about the potential that we have to make this a very good program. I’m excited about coaching at the prep school level. I see what they have done in Pennsylvania at places like Penn Charter and Germantown Academy. I’d like us to be a program that can be competitive every year."
Zosulis is hoping he can bring some stability to a program that is now on its third head coach in four years. He’s in it for the long haul and hopes to get off to a good start this year.
"That’s one thing I would like to be able to do," Zosulis said. "If you look at kids like Drew (Godwin) and Andrew (Davidson), they’re on their third coach in four years. That’s not a situation anybody wants. I look at Drew and can see that he has really matured. And we have kids that really want to work hard.
"I am a coach that stresses defense first and I think the kids are getting used to that. We’ve got talent. We’re not a big team, but we have kids who can play. And we have some good younger players as well."
Zosulis comes to PDS after having played in an environment where basketball was big. He would like to create that same kind of environment with the Panthers’ program.
"I was recruited by Division II and Division III teams," Zosulis said. "Going to Kings was a great experience. Up there, the main focus is high school and college sports, those are the top stories on the sports reports every day. They give those scores and then they’ll say, ‘by the way, the Phillies won, 5-4.’
"I was champing at the bit to get going. I was at the school at the end of the last school year to see the kids and get an idea of what we had coming back, and also trying to get some interest. The kids are excited and I am excited."
The Panthers open the season Thursday at home against Pennington. Zosulis got a chance to see his players in action last week against some top former PDS players.
"We had an alumni game the day after Thanksgiving and 22 young men came back, including the starting five from the 1999 Prep A championship team that I have heard so much about," said Zosulis, who is assisted by Rocque Calvo and Paris McLean. It was a good experience for us to go up against that kind of competition."
And beginning next week, Zosulis will get a chance to see whether his past experience can help bring the PDS program back to a championship level.

