Back in the game

Pennsville poised to bring veteran Salem County coach out of retirement to become their new girls basketball coach

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

Pennsville High School is expected to fill the second of two head coaching vacancies created when Sam Trapp left in March to become athletics director at Triton Regional High School when the new girls basketball coach is approved early next week.

Former Salem High girls basketball coach Steve Merritt is on the agenda and pending board approval Monday night will be named the Eagles’ new coach.

Merritt, a 200-game winner and multiple sectional champion during his long Salem tenure, is already familiar with at least one player on the current Pennsville roster, having coached Nora Ausland as a freshman at Salem.

Ausland, now a senior, is on track to become the 43rd girls basketball player in Salem County to surpass 1,000 career points this season, the eighth in a Pennsville uniform and join the elite 1,000-point/500-rebound club. She scored her first 462 points at Salem, 283 for Merritt. She also has surpassed 100 3-pointers, assists, blocks shots and steals.

Her Pennsville teammate, junior Marley Wood, also is on track to become a 1,000-point scorer this season.

In Merritt’s last year at Salem, the 2021-22 season, the Rams were 12-14 and beat Schalick in an opening round game in the South Jersey Group I playoffs. They lost in the quarterfinals at Woodbury. For his total body or work, he will be inducted into the Salem County Sports Hall of Fame on Aug. 22.

Earlier this summer Casey Slusher was approved to succeed Trapp as the Eagles’ girls soccer coach. At that same board meeting, the board approved $47,732 in stipends for the coaching staffs in football, boys soccer and girls soccer – $6,070 per head coach and $4,087 per assistant – and reported a total varsity coaching stipend pool of more than $200,000.

The board also is expected to approve the Eagles’ enrollment in the NJSIAA for the 2024-25 school year and their dues of $2700 at Monday’s meeting.