With coach ailing, Pine Richland Aquatics welcomes program alumnus as new leader

By: Ted Sarneso
Sunday, May 18, 2025 | 11:01 AM

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It’s never an easy task to find a new coach.

Even more so when the person being replaced has been a coach and a pillar of a sporting community for 30 years.

Such was the case for the Pine-Richland High School swim team and its feeder program, Pine-Richland Aquatics (PRA).

This past February, Rams head coach Pete Barry suffered a stroke while driving and was involved in a car accident where he sustained multiple injuries.

Since then, Barry has been undergoing a prolonged recovery in a rehabilitation hospital.

“It came as a big shock, not just to the PRA and the high school team, but to the region and even beyond,” said PRA first vice president Stacey Shaffer. “He taught our swimmers a lot, and it was always about what they needed. He is missed by so many.”

In that time, Barry’s sister, Shannon Kabala, who is an assistant coach for PRA, took over for the high school team just as it was heading into the WPIAL championships while other local programs had coaches step up to help fill the void in the PRA.

In April, the PRA found its new head coach in a former PRA member in Jeff Gavin.

“Coach Pete was such a good mentor and teacher,” Gavin said. “He was a very strong figure, and I thought he was going to be all right and everything was going to be fine. It wasn’t until Pine-Richland reached out to me that I knew it was real, that Pete needed more time to recover.”

Gavin started swimming late in the game. He dabbled in swimming through eighth grade and swam in a few summer leagues. It wasn’t until high school that he committed to going year-round.

He was a team captain at Mars and set multiple records for the team and ended up as a state qualifier, finishing third in the 500 freestyle before graduating in 2007. He then went on to IUP where he set team records and was an all-conference swimmer.

He made it or two and a half years before he suffered an injury and came back home to finish his career at Butler County Community College.

“I think I did a pretty good job at swimming,” Gavin said.

Gavin began coaching as soon as he finished his swimming career. He started out as an assistant coach at Seneca Valley in 2011 under Brian Blackwell and was there for 12 years. The Raiders’ boys team won a state title in 2022.

“We had a real good run and built a real nice program while I was down there,” Gavin said. “It was super awesome to be a part of, to see the key six or seven guys grow from the time they were 8 years old up through their senior seasons and watch 10 years of hard work come to fruition with that title.

“Coach Blackwell didn’t turn everything over to me all at once and never sheltered me from something he felt I could do on my own,” Gavin said. “He let me struggle, let me see the ups and downs of coaching.”

In 2023, Gavin decided to take over a program of his own and took the Bethel Park head coaching job.

“I would have been there longer if the opportunity at Pine-Richland hadn’t come up,” Gavin said. “It’s a great opportunity to be closer to home, closer to my folks, to give back to a program that fostered the love of swimming in me. It feels like the place where I was supposed to be.”

Joining Gavin on his staff is Ryan Schonbachler, a 2017 graduate of Pine-Richland who was a three-year captain at Pitt and was the head coach for the Oxford Club for two years.

“He’s already making a great impact with our swimmers and is someone I love to have standing at my side on deck,” Gavin said. “My excitement for the program would not be the same without him on staff. It’s easier to work when you have someone who helps make things fun.”

“When it became apparent that coach Barry’s absence was not going to be a short-term situation, we really felt the need to secure a very highly qualified coaching staff that would bring stability and continue the legacy of the program that coach Barry built,” Shaffer said.

“We’re super excited that both Jeff and Ryan had strong ties and had always had a desire to return to Pine-Richland Aquatics to coach,” Shaffer added.

It’s been surreal for Gavin as he’s come back to the pool where it all started. When he would come in with Bethel Park as a visitor, there was a different feeling to the way he feels now.

“It has a feeling of nostalgia to it, feels like home,” Gavin said. “With Pete not being there, it does feel a little empty. He was always such a staple of Pine-Richland Aquatics and the swimming community.”

Gavin counts Barry as one of his mentors, not just as a swimmer but as a coach. Barry was someone Gavin sought out early on in his coaching career.

“We sat down and had lunch at Eat’n Park and he gave me a lot of coaching materials and ideas,” Gavin recalled. “He was one of the first people who inspired me to become a coach because he was the cool guy and seemed to have all the answers.”

Gavin said he would go to Barry with the science that he just read about and Barry would explain to Gavin the why behind his coaching and how his process was working in certain direction.

“To have that foundation and knowledge and being able to hand it off to me a little bit, it really did inspire me and gave me a want to coach,” Gavin said. “He had a major impact on not just me, but everyone he came in contact with.”

As Gavin continued in his coaching journey, he began to see himself in the kids he was coaching.

“You realize the traits you had as a swimmer, as a high schooler, and you see them come out in your own swimmers, for better or for worse,” Gavin said. “When I saw coach Barry, I said I was sorry for who I was back then. He said, ‘You were in high school and I get it. You’re a kid who is excitable, and, at 16, you don’t know much about the world.’ We had a good laugh over it.”

Gavin also recalled a memory from his senior season at Mars when he was competing in the state championships and how he had a swim meet the next day in Maryland. The way his family’s schedule worked out there would be no one to drive him south.

“Pete had to stay the next day for states, but he still drove overnight from Bucknell to Rockville, Md., and back to get me down to my next swim meet and give me the opportunity to swim,” Gavin remembered. “He did that for everyone. He was always so giving when it came to being around the pool.”

Gavin’s last day on deck coaching Bethel Park was April 3, and he started in the water with Pine-Richland on April 21. There were two weeks where he was wrapping up season summaries for Bethel Park and was getting the season rolling, mostly on the administrative side, with the PRA.

There was a little anxiety and apprehension on the part of Gavin, knowing the program he was taking over given how highly regarded Barry is.

“There’s that own self push to make sure I do this right,” Gavin said. “When I stepped into Bethel, the program was in a slump at the time, so it was easy to fix what had gone wrong. There’s not a lot that’s gone wrong here.”

So, the question for Gavin then became, how does he take something good and turn it into something better?

“My focus is trying to grow what they’ve already built. The road for growth can hopefully be maximized,” said Gavin.

What made the PRA special was its ability to bring in athletes from neighboring school districts who didn’t have a home pool to train in during the school offseason.

When the pandemic hit, the Pine-Richland School District, like a lot of other school districts, would not allow out-of-district kids to participate. Since then, it’s been a struggle to get kids from other districts back to the PRA, and it’s shown in the program’s drop in the national rankings from the mid-300s to the upper 1000s.

“Just trying to revitalize that out-of-district community, that safe haven for swimmers in neighboring school districts who don’t have a place to swim,” Gavin said. “How do we find ways to get them lane space and practice opportunities?

“It’s about building that base of a large community, getting a large group of kids back into the PRA. That’s our biggest area for growth. I hope to stay with Pine-Richland a long time to watch this program grow and to see things come to life a little bit more.”

The Pine-Richland School District recently posted a job listing for the high school’s varsity swim team, and Gavin has already tossed his name in as a candidate and would relish an opportunity to coach that team as well.

“The more synergy you can have between your varsity program and aquatics club, the easier everything runs for you. Fingers crossed that I get the job,” Gavin said.

Tags: Pine-Richland