When former Salisbury girls basketball head coach Joe Mladosich recently decided to step down from that position, Salisbury didn’t have to look far for his replacement.

Dan Reichenbach, a 1986 graduate of Salisbury High School, replaces Mladosich after his sixth and final season.

Reichenbach is well known around the school and community, leading Salisbury’s Middle School girls’ basketball team for the past two seasons and coaching the Falcon jumpers during the spring track and field season.

“When Joe decided to step down, Monica asked if I was interested,” Reichenbach said. “I said, ‘Yeah, I think I’m interested. I would like to give it an opportunity.’ I coached all the girls before, whether it was Saint Thomas Moore, Salisbury or track and field.

“I’ve been coaching seventh and eighth grade middle school at Saint Thomas for the last 17 years. I was coaching seventh and eighth grade girls at Saint Thomas and Salisbury needed a middle school coach…That first year [2017] I coached the middle school girls I had a good group that year.”

While at Saint Thomas Moore, Reichenbach coached the boys middle school team for 13 years and then the girls for the past four. He finished last season with an impressive 33-4 record. His record over his two years as the Salisbury Middle School coach is 26-15. Now he’ll look to translate that success over onto the varsity stage.

“There is more pressure, but basketball is basketball,” Reichenbach said. “I’ve been coaching for a long time. I’m looking forward to the opportunity.

“With big responsibility comes bigger pressure, but it’s nothing I’m not used to.”

He also coaches a team called the Shamrocks in the winter and summer. It’s a combination of Saint Thomas Moore players and other girls from the Lehigh Valley, including Salisbury.

Reichenbach was a successful track and field athlete and basketball player at Salisbury in the 80s.

He played both sports in college, first at Lebanon Valley College, then became a three-time All- American in track and field at Moravian College.

He’ll bring a different style up to the varsity level than the girls were used to in the past. Reichenbach has seen that philosophy work many of times during his coaching career, and he expects this group to buy into it as well.

“The best thing about Salisbury boys and girls is we have multi-sport athletes,” Reichenbach said. “We don’t really have pure basketball players there. They are athletic, so we just have to learn how to play an athletic style. The style that I’ve always played is that we play full court man-to-man. We pressure the ball the entire floor, and we run, run and run. It’s a little bit different style than they’ve played in the past.

“We’ll try to push the ball. If you get kids that are enthusiastic about it and that are athletes, and you get them to play defense, if you make steals and layups that is half of your battle on offense right there.”

Reichenbach is in the process of finalizing the rest of his coaching staff and deciding on the team’s upcoming plans for the summer.

Mladosich leaves Salisbury with an 81-66 record (61-41 in Colonial League) over six seasons. He helped guide the Lady Falcons to the District 11 Class 2A championship game in 2014. Salisbury won a state playoff game for first time in 23 years that season against Imhotep Charter.