By ZACH BRAZILLER
Bob Sprance, the Forest Hills girls’ soccer coach, has taken over as the head boys’ basketball coach at the school on an interim basis, he said last Thursday night.
In the wake of Coach Ben Chobhaphand’s year-long suspension for alleged illegal recruiting, the school’s athletic director, Eileen Domnitz, called Sprance Feb. 15, asking if he would be interested. Since his Clara Barton boys’ basketball season just ended, he jumped at the offer and has helped assistants Anthony Dulin and Hector Nunez run practices.
“I came to help the kids finish the next weeks,” he said. “They were upset at what happened, to lose their coach who was working so hard for them. I didn’t discuss anything that happened, I just talked to them about basketball and going as far in the playoffs as possible.”
Chobhaphand, the Forest Hills alumnus and seventh-year coach who has won more than 100 games and led the Rangers to a Queens title in 2009, allegedly recruited former Francis Lewis student Denzel Thomas who is now at Queens High School of Teaching. Lewis Coach Perry Dortch filed a complaint against Chobhaphand with the PSAL and the league found Chobhaphand guilty after an investigation, although Thomas’ father, Sal, said the coach never recruited his son.
Sprance, best known as an advocate to keeping girls’ soccer in the spring before it was moved to the fall two years ago after a Title IX lawsuit, emphasized he is only there to help Dulin and Nunez, and is working on learning the names and habits of his new players.
“He’s cool, he just sticks with the plan,” senior guard Shawn Branch said. “Things haven’t really changed.”
As for next year, Sprance isn’t sure what will happen if the status quo remains on Chobhaphand’s punishment.
“I’m just worried about this two-to-three-week period,” he said.
Sources have indicated Chobhaphand has filed an appeal and is hopeful he can return at some point. His players, Branch said, dearly miss him.
“It’s still emotional, everyone missed him,” the senior said. “It’s our senior year — everything we do now is for him. He put so much work in for us. Now that he’s gone, we’re doing this all for him.”
