By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

RUMFORD – Mountain Valley basketball may be beginning a new era this winter, but it probably won’t have to start over.

Dave Gerrish, a veteran AAU coach whose background includes coaching many of the players on the 2005-06 Falcons squad, will be the next varsity boys’ basketball coach, pending school board approval later this month.

If approved, Gerrish, a 45-year-old process control engineer for NewPage Corp., will replace Ryan Casey, who resigned after nine years as coach to take a new position as assistant principal at Mountain Valley Middle School.

Gerrish was selected from a group of “several” candidates, according to athletic director John Bernard, who declined to give a specific figure on the number of applicants.

“He has a vast knowledge of the game and he’s a real student of the game,” Bernard said. “You don’t have to talk to Dave long to realize he has tremendous knowledge of the game. The other thing is he has a tremendous passion for coaching. He exudes enthusiasm for coaching.”

“When the job came open, I just thought it would be a great opportunity, and when (Bernard selected him), I just couldn’t believe it,” said Ge rrish, who lives in Rumford.

Gerrish was a forward on Rumford High School’s back-to-back state championship teams in 1976 and 1977. The 1976 team went on to win the New England championship. He went on to SMVTI (now SMTC), but his playing time there was cut short by a knee injury.

He got into coaching when his daughter, Jill, and son, D.J., entered the youth ranks. He’s been coaching AAU for the last decade.

“The AAU experience has been terrific,” said Gerrish, who took D.J.’s sixth-grade team to the nationals in Virginia Beach a few years ago. “That’s been a great time, and I really thought it would be good to coach at this level.”

Gerrish coached the junior varsity boys at Dirigo for one season, in 2000-01.

Jill played at Dirigo and graduated in 2002 and Dave became an assistant girls’ varsity coach at Mountain Valley in 2003-04.

D.J. has been a guard on the varsity boys’ squad since his freshman year and will be a part of a veteran nucleus that includes five seniors. The Falcons finished 18-1 last year.

“I like our speed and I think we’re very strong and real deep,” Gerrish said of the team he expects to inherit. “It’s a senior-laden group. I have high hopes for them. I think they can go as far as they want to.”

He added that he plans to follow much of Casey’s coaching philosophy.

He also cited his daughter’s coach at Dirigo, Gavin Kane, as a major influence. This winter, he’ll get a chance to coach against Kane, who is coaching both the boys’ and girls’ varsity at Dirigo.

In AAU, Gerrish’s teams were known for playing tough man-to-man defense, and he plans to continue that at Mountain Valley.

“I think we put as much emphasis on the possessions of the other team as we do our own possessions. We can play from all four areas of the floor. We don’t trap a ton. We just try to establish a lot of good pressure,” he said.

“It’s an old adage,” he added, “but the three things I want the kids to get out of the programs is to play hard, play smart and play together.”