Former assistant is new head coach
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
After years of assisting in several sports, Cristina Venetucci had hoped she’d get the chance to be a head coach at Montgomery High School.
It was a bit of a surprise that her first opportunity came with the girls tennis team.
”I was always hoping it would be softball first,” Venetucci said. “Any position is a great opportunity. It’s something I’ve been involved with, and at least I played it in high school.”
Venetucci played three sports at Monroe High School — tennis, basketball and softball, and continued with softball at The College of New Jersey. For the past three seasons, she was an assistant coach to girls tennis coach John Arnold, who retired after last year. Venetucci, who led the JV team the past two seasons, steps into his place.
”Tennis wasn’t my main sport when I was growing up,” Venetucci said. “It was softball. I was a little hesitant at first because John has been around so long. He seemed to know everything. I compared myself to him. I know he wanted me to take over. It’s something I figured I’d challenge myself and see where it takes me.”
Venetucci still works at her own tennis game. She’s picked up pointers from her players, and now hopes to be able to steer the Cougars toward another good year.
”Rachel Casey was giving me lessons a couple days last year,” Venetucci said of one of her senior co-captains. “I had never taken a lesson, but I played for fun. I was just athletic and kind of picked it up. I learned from the girls and I’ve picked it up.”
Venetucci also has the help of her new JV coach, Erik Tavel, who is a tennis instructor, as well as assistant coach Katherine Stoltenberg, who is an MHS graduate that was on the team when Arnold came back for his final stint.
”I hope we can all work together,” Venetucci said. “I tell everybody, the combination of the three of us is ultimately what you want. I have experience in coaching the tennis girls, and I have the physical education background so I can do a lot of stuff with conditioning. Erik is the tennis instructor and knows all the behind the scenes stuff, and Katherine was a student-athlete at Montgomery who went through everything the girls are. We cover all the aspects that you’d want.
”I’m having a great time working with them,” she added. “We stay after practice and hit together. It’s been great so far. It’s only going to get better.”
The Cougars open the season Sept. 7. Venetucci will be counting on her players for some of the advanced knowledge of their opponents in the early going until she is familiar with Montgomery’s varsity foes.
”I know a couple teams that are normally in the top of the county or the conference,” Venetucci said. “They may have struggled a bit lately, but you’re always going to expect Hillsborough, Ridge, Bridgewater to be strong. As far as who they lost, I don’t know. That’s one of the things I was hesitant about taking over because I didn’t know much about what teams lost. I’m sure the girls will know.”
Montgomery, she knows, was hit hard by graduation, and also lost last year’s No. 1 player, Rachel Pierson, who is focusing on her game outside of school in her senior year. Venetucci is hoping that Montgomery can still perform in its traditionally strong way even though it lost its top two singles players and its first doubles team as well as half of its second doubles tandem.
”It’s a lot to live up to,” Venetucci said. “Unfortunately, we are missing some of the seniors that graduated, Brittany (Foxx), Julia (Goldman), and Rachel Pierson is not coming back this year.
”We have two starters from last year that are returning, Rachel Casey and Amanda Tilles. Charlotte (Sclapari) graduated as well. We have a couple seniors, and a couple juniors that have been on JV, and now it’s their chance. Within the first couple weeks of preseason, they’ve showed me they’re tough competitors. They’re like a wall. They’ll get everything back. They may not have those winning shots like Rachel Pierson, but they’ll annoy some other players. I’ve been with these girls for the past couple years with JV, and it’s nice to coach them when they’re on varsity.”
A health and physical education teacher for the last six years at MHS, Venetucci has also been an active coach at a variety of levels. She coaches freshman girls basketball for a year, eighth grade girls basketball for two years, middle school softball for two years and JV softball for the past three years. Venetucci’s experience with the sub-varsity levels gives her insight into how she’d like to see the tennis program develop.
”I met with Rachel and Amanda, my two captains and we talked about how we wanted to get the program to not be so divided, the JV and varsity,” Venetucci said. “We would practice separately when I was with the JV. We want to make it like a big family. When the varsity goes to states, none of the JV is there now. I’d like them to be there to support them too. It’s nice to have captains with the same philosophy.
”Being the JV coach for several sports or freshman coach for several sports, I was seeing that separation,” she added. “If you see it, my athletes see it. It’s kind of a downer when you see that separation and you’re not cheering for each other.”
Venetucci also plans to implement some of her strengths into the program. With her background, she is hoping to create better all-around tennis players.
”I actually have gotten some reading material on conditioning for tennis,” she said. “That’s something I’d like to see more in the program, not just going out and playing tennis and more tennis. We need to work on the basic fundamentals with footwork and agility and speed. We need to do some conditioning. When I tried instituting it in JV practices, I had a couple girls complain that they just wanted to play tennis. I just want the girls to buy into it. You can have the greatest groundstrokes and volleys, but if you can’t get there, it’s not going to help.”
Venetucci is looking forward to seeing how her Cougars develop under her direction. It’s a chance to implement her own ideas in her first head coaching position at the varsity level. The sport may not be the one she expected to get first, but she’s looking to make the most of her first opportunity.