Jun 6, 2013 2 min read

The Joe Dunn coaching tree at Trinity continues to grow.

Now, Tim Tessmer, one of Dunn’s former assistants, will look to take the Trinity boys basketball team back to the playoffs.

Tessmer was hired at Thursday’s school board meeting to succeed longtime Dunn assistant Stan Noszka, who resigned after one season.

An assistant the past four years, Tessmer was given a three-year contract and will be paid $6,242 per year.

“I already have some ties to the program,” said Tessmer, who’s a learning support teacher in the district. “I just wanted to see (the program’s success) continue.”

Tessmer went to West Allegheny High School and was a two-time all-section basketball player, averaging 16 points and 10 rebounds as a junior and senior before graduating in 1999.

He played two years of basketball of Thiel College before transferring to Slippery Rock to complete his teaching degree.

Tessmer graduated from Slippery Rock and started teaching and coaching at Freeport that fall before taking a job at Trinity in 2008, first as a volunteer assistant.

Dunn made Tessmer the junior varsity coach a year later, and he served as Noszka’s top assistant last season.

“My expectations are to continue to do some of the same things Joe Dunn had done over the past 12 years, then build off those and hopefully continue into the future,” Tessmer said.

Tessmer called himself a “back-to-the-basket post player” and said he’d like to see his team’s offense start from the inside-out – a change to Trinity’s guard-heavy approach this past winter.

Like many new coaches, Tessmer wants to grow the youth program and drum up interest in order to help Trinity compete at the Class AAAA level.

The biggest task will be replacing a heap of talent from a team that finished 11-11 and narrowly missed the WPIAL Class AAAA playoffs.

“Everybody in the area knows we lost five seniors, four starters and about 50 points a game,” Tessmer said. “We have a lot to replace.

“Some people would think that’s an impossible job in the section that we’re in, but I think we have to first establish the consistency with these guys – going through multiple coaching changes over the years, even though I’ve been a part of the program, it’s still difficult.”