Truhan leaves Cougars for Central Regional
Coach guided Colts Neck basketball team to success
BY TIM MORRIS Staff Writer
By guiding the Colts Neck High School girls basketball team to the 2009 NJSIAA Tournament of Champions final, John Truhan became a very sought after head coach.

The success he enjoyed with the Cougars opened coaching doors he had not expected to open and when administrators at Central Regional High School in Bayville, Ocean County, offered him the head coaching position, it was an offer that Truhan could not turn down.

The reasons were not all financial or professional. It came down to location. Central Regional is 1 mile from Truhan's home in Bayville.

Truhan and his wife, Kim, have two children, Kristi, 8, and John John, 4. The demands of coaching so far from home in Colts Neck had caused Truhan to miss some of his children's sporting events. That is something that weighed on Truhan. It was a sacrifice that was getting harder and harder to make.

"You only get one chance to watch your children grow," he said. "It (Central Regional) was a better situation for my family. It's so close to home."

That proximity turned the scales in Central Regional's favor. Still, it was not an easy decision because Truhan knows he is "leaving one of the elite programs" in New Jersey.

Prior to resigning as Colts Neck's coach, Truhan assembled his players to break the news that he was not going to be coaching them next year,

He managed to create a light moment by telling the players it was all their fault he was leaving. If they had not played so well, he said, he would not have been such a sought-after coach and the Central Regional position would not have opened up.

"Colts Neck is a coach's dream," he said. "The run we had was a great experience. It gave me a résumé that coaches dream of."

Under Truhan's guidance, the Cougars emerged from the pack to become not just a dominant Shore Conference team, but one of the select girls basketball programs in New Jersey.

In looking back on his six successful years at Colts Neck, Truhan went back to the start and credited Meighan Kelly — the program's first 1,000-point scorer — and Caitlin Burton with paving the way for what followed.

"They were dying to win," he said. "They made it easy for me. They made me feel comfortable."

In that first season with Kelly and Burton as leaders, the Cougars reached the Central Jersey state sectional tournament finals, the first of four appearances the Cougars would make under Truhan. The first season established the Cougars as a force and they continued to build from there.

Of course, the 2008-09 season was one for the history books. The Cougars not only won the Central Jersey Group IV state sectional title that had eluded them, they went on to win the Group IV state crown and earned a berth in the NJSIAA Tournament of Champions.

The Cougars defeated Rumson-Fair Haven in the first round of the six-team Tournament of Champions.

Then, in a near flawless performance, the Cougars dismantled defending champion Malcolm X Shabazz High School of Newark in the semifinals to become only the second Freehold Regional High School District team to play for the Tournament of Champions title (Marlboro's girls were the runners-up in 2003 to Shabazz).

Although St. John Vianney of Holmdel defeated Colts Neck in the Tournament of Champions final at the Izod Center, the loss did little to diminish a 29-4 season that included a victory over New York City power Christ the King and a holiday tournament victory in Orlando, Fla.

The triumph over Shabazz stood out to Truhan.

"We were the first team to beat Shabazz in the Tournament of Champions," the coach said. "We played the perfect game a game too early."

Truhan leaves Colts Neck knowing that the girls basketball program improved under his watch.

"The program is in better shape than when I started," he said.

The Cougars, who had never been ranked among the Top 10 teams in the Shore Conference before Truhan arrived, became a Top 10 team in the state under his guidance and raised the bar for the program.