State tournament berth 'validation' for Gatlinburg-Pittman's Katie Moore
This moment had been years in the making.
Gatlinburg-Pittman High School had pushed its lead out of reach, and as the final seconds ticked away, the crowd roared and the players started to celebrate. It is a memory that still gives girls basketball coach Katie Moore chills.
“Towards the end of the game when we kind of knew we had sealed the deal, you heard an uproar from all of the community that came out and watched us,” Moore said. “It was a great feeling. The excitement of making school history when the clock ticked down and seeing the girls running and jumping on each other, that’s what you coach for.”
The Lady Highlanders put together a 29-5 season in which they won the District 3-AA and Region 2-AA championships before clinching that state tournament berth. An overtime win over Westview in the quarterfinals put the finishing touches on an unforgettable season that led to Moore being named the 2016-17 PrepXtra Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.
It was also the final chapter in a seven-year journey to reach Murfreesboro that began with Moore taking over in 2010. Gatlinburg-Pittman hovered around .500 for the first two years, but has become a 20-plus-win program.
In the two years before this season, the Lady Highlanders fell a game short of the state tournament, making this run more special.
“She’s been wanting for so long to get the girls who worked so hard for her to the state tournament,” Gatlinburg-Pittman assistant principal AJ Bennett said. “For her, this was for more than those 15 girls she coached this year — this was for all the players (she has coached).
“When she first took over, they were a .500, middle-of-the-road team. The last few years, they had so much success but came up a little bit short of Murfreesboro, so to get there this year I know it meant a lot to her because it was validation for all the hard work they put in the program.”
It was a moment that meant a lot to Moore, the team and the community. The focus now shifts to creating similar ones in the years to come.
“We had a special team,” Moore said. “It just shows the hard work that we’ve put in these last few years has taken us to our goal. Now we just have more to look forward to in the upcoming seasons to try and get further and further.”
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