One-time 3-point sniper died tragically in July
EDITOR’S NOTE: Orange and Black typically covers Tyrone football exclusively, but in light of the tragic death of one of the top female athletes to play for Tyrone last month, we’re publishing this retrospective on the career and impact of Gendie Haverstein Miller.
It’s not always easy to grasp the impact of a team or an individual player in real time, but that wasn’t the case for Tyrone’s girls basketball team in 1993-94, and it certainly wasn’t the case for Gendie Haverstein.
That was the year the Lady Eagles, coached by Jim Swaney, won Tyrone’s first District 6 basketball championship – not the first girls championship, but the first District basketball title at all. It was groundbreaking, and it set the stage for an era when Tyrone grew into a regional powerhouse.
Haverstein was one of the players at the forefront of that movement, and just like the team she played for, the smooth shooting guard was revolutionary, with an impact that was felt years beyond the time she spent on the court.
Haverstein, who later married William Miller, her husband of 17 years, died after a tragic accident on July 23. While watching her 16-year-old daughter Marlee participate in the Western PA College Softball showcase camp at Renzie Park in McKeesport, she was killed after she was struck by falling branches from a tree she had settled under to escape the heat of the mid-summer day. She was 49 years old.
While at Tyrone, Haverstein changed the game with her prolific shooting ability, which was a key component in their championship run.
The three-point line was first adopted for high school basketball in Pennsylvania in 1987-88, but it took a couple seasons for it to catch on as the integral part of the game it is today. While the Lady Eagles had some capable shooters prior to Haverstein’s arrival on the varsity squad in 1990-91 – players like like Val Harris and Rachel DelGrosso – no one took to the three line quite like Haverstein, who spent a career draining shots from beyond the arc.
She was the program’s first true sharpshooter, to the point where Swaney at one point in 1994 said that an open shot from three for Haverstein was essentially like a layup. She spread the floor and opened up the game, extending defenses and creating space for a slashing all-around point guard like Ashley Norris and a hard-nosed post like Jennifer Diehl, both of whom, like Haverstein, became thousand-point scorers.
During the 93-94 campaign, when Tyrone finished 24-2, Haverstein, who wore number 23 and sported a pair of white Jordan 9s as a senior, was as close to a lock from long range as there was in high school basketball during that period. She drained 69 three-point field goals, which was a record that stood for more than 20 years, and averaged more than 15 points per game. In the game where she eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for her career – a 72-54 win over Lebanon in a Christmas tournament in December of 1993 – Haverstein sank 7 triples and scored 32 points. At the time, it was a gym record at Lebanon High School, though for Haverstein it merely tied a record she already held.
Three months later, she helped propel the Lady Eagles to their title win, averaging 19 points per game in the District 6 playoffs, including a game in the quarterfinals where she dropped 28 on Cambria Heights.
Haverstein went on to finish her career with 177 triples and 1,263 points. She was the program’s third player to reach 1,000 points, joining Barb Miller and her sister Tobie, who had accomplished the feat in 1989.
The team Haverstein helped to lead was every bit as groundbreaking as she was. Prior to 93-94, Tyrone was a team on the come-up. The Lady Eagles had players with grit and some with real basketball skill, but Haverstein’s class was the first true super class during Swaney’s tenure, which went from 1988 through 2006. Haverstein and Norris, who went on to play at Boston University, were the two superstars of the group, but two other players from the class played ball in college, while a third ran track. Haverstein herself played four seasons at Juniata College.
They set the blueprint for succeeding teams: identify your talent early, find three scorers, keep them playing together, and work within the system. And Swaney’s system was quite good at allowing offensively minded players like Haverstein to thrive, as he proved when he later won a pair of PIAA titles coaching at Bellwood-Antis. Of the 16 girls who reached 1,000 points at Tyrone, nine played for Swaney.
Not long after Haverstein’s class had graduated, another superclass came along and kept the ball rolling, and that class featured a high-scoring point guard (Sarah Grazier), a sharpshooter from deep (Megan DelBaggio), and a dominant post (Nicolee DelBaggio). They went on to play in the PIAA tournament twice, but the formula for success was established by Haverstein’s group just a few short years before.
As good as she was, by all accounts, Haverstein’s skill on the basketball court was surpassed by the passion she had for being a mother and traveling to watch her daughter play high-level softball. Marlee Miller will be a junior this year at Ligonier Valley High School.
The family is hosting a celebration of Haverstein’s life Sunday, August 10 at 1 p.m. at 311 Baptist Church Rd, Mill Run, PA 15464. All are welcome.
ORANGE AND BLACK 