Seton Hill men's, women's basketball coaches shaped by Mt. Pleasant roots

They light up like the Christmas tree in the McKenna Center lobby when they reach back into their Mt. Pleasant past and pluck memories that molded them as coaches.

Mark Katarski and Ben Wilkins are teammates again, only they aren’t playing for Joe Dunn on the Mt. Pleasant boys basketball team like they did 27 years ago.

They are now head coaches at Seton Hill, Katarski in his 10th season with the women’s team, Wilkins his first with the men.

They were guards on the 1994-95 Mt. Pleasant team that also featured current Latrobe head boys coach Brad Wetzel as an up-and-coming assistant.

Katarski and Wilkins took turns circling the Doughboy as they discussed their playing-turned-coaching days.

Said Katarski:

• “Mt. Pleasant is a sports community. I remember shooting hoops in our barn. Maybe that’s why I had good footwork. I was like a homeless man’s Jalen Rose.”

• “We didn’t have Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. We had some great football and baseball teams. People would pack the stands.”

• “Coach Dunn used to call our gym the Viking Dome.”

Said Wilkins, who moved back into his childhood home and lived with his mother for three months when he took the job:

• “I was like a glue guy. They didn’t cut me because I was a nice kid. I went to Frick Park and worked on my game and got better.”

• “I still remember a fumble recovery I had against the Colts in midget football.”

• “Coach Dunn let us play and have fun. He was the perfect coach to play for.”

Katarski mentioned the men’s coaching opening at Seton Hill to Wilkins initially, but that was as far as his involvement went.

“Ben earned this,” Katarski said. “It was all him. People don’t realize there are only 300 full-time coaches in the country. People don’t understand how tough it is to be a full-time coach.

“Ben is excited and eager in what he wants to do here. It was a bolt of energy across the hall from me.”

The ‘94-95 Vikings featured a pair of Division I tight ends in Mike Billick and Joey Cyphert. The late Larry Emert was a key scorer.

Dunn said Katarski and Wilkins were cerebral players whom he depended on in key situations.

“It’s wonderful to have two guys I coached become college head coaches at a school so close at hand,” Dunn said. “They were both fundamentally sound, team-oriented guys. When we were in a huddle, I was comfortable asking them, ‘What do you see?’

“They were coach’s players. Now, they’re players’ coaches.”

Wetzel said he saw Wilkins becoming a coach before Katarski, although he is not surprised to see both of them guiding teams.

“Ben was a sponge,” Wetzel said. “He always had input on what we were doing. Mark was a gangly kid who had court sense and a high basketball IQ. Neither shied away from competition.”

Katarski and Wilkins trumpet the praises of Dunn, who guided Mt. Pleasant for 12 years before finishing his prep coaching career at Trinity. He has the most wins in each program with over 100 at each place.

“I never heard him swear,” Katarski said.

Said Dunn: “We’ll have to take their word on that.”

Dunn helped set the course for Wilkins’ coaching career.

“Joe Dunn changed my life forever,” Wikins said. “In 10th grade, we sat down and he asked me, ‘What do you want to be?’” Wilkins said. “I told him I wanted to be a football coach. He said you’re not mean enough to be a football coach. You should be a basketball coach.”

Before long, Dunn was on the phone with coaching colleague Herb Sendek, a Pittsburgh native who was coaching at North Carolina State.

Wilkins not only attended the college, but he worked as a student manager and video coordinator. His coaching career was off and running.

Stops followed at Barton College, William & Mary, Mount St. Mary’s and most recently, Army West Point, before he circled back to Westmoreland County to lead the Griffins.

Wilkins said Dunn was not a screamer, rather calmly telling players what they did wrong.

Wilkins and Katarski are mild-mannered on the court, too.

“If you have a coach who screams at a kid all the time, that kid isn’t going to respond the way you want him to,” Wilkins said.

Seton Hill’s men won their first five games under Wilkins for their best start in more than 20 years.

The women’s team is 8-3 after a 3-0 road trip to Puerto Rico last weekend.

Katarski, who kept a scorebook for his dad’s teams when he was 8 — “I was hooked,” he said — channels his inner Dunn on game days.

“I still use two of the out-of-bounds plays coach Dunn used,” Katarski said. “We would be in the most pressure-packed situations, and he would say, ‘This is fun.’ ”

The men’s team (5-3) hosted Shippensburg on Nov. 22 and won, 81-70.

Dunn’s son, Michael, is a sophomore reserve guard for the Raiders.

“It was like a perfect storm with this job,” Wilkins said. “This situation could have been in Nebraska; I wanted it so bad. That it’s this close to my hometown is a bonus.

“We have never been to the NCAA (Division II) Tournament here. There are four Division I programs that have never made the tournament: Army, William & Mary, New York-Brooklyn and The Citadel. I coached at two of those. I want to roll up my sleeves and get to work here.”

Dunn said he reached out to Katarski and Wilkins for random coaching advice when he was still working the sidelines.

“I’ve learned from them like they learned from me,” Dunn said.