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Jamie Walborn gets Lebanon girls basketball gig


Lebanon High hired former Annville-Cleona coach Jaime Walborn as its new girls basketball coach at Monday night's school board meeting

Basketball, and coaching basketball, is in Jaime Walborn's blood.

So it was only a matter of time until the former Lebanon Catholic standout and ex-Annville-Cleona girls coach made her way back to the bench and resumed her relationship with the hoops life.

The time is now.

Walborn's self-imposed two-year hiatus from the game she loves and grew up with ended on Monday night when she was officially hired as the new Lebanon High girls basketball coach by a unanimous vote of the Lebanon School District board of directors.

Walborn replaces Ben Brewer, who stepped down in early March after five seasons at the helm and two Lancaster-Lebanon Section Two titles. She previously spent four seasons running the show at A-C, going 49-49 before resigning after the 2013-14 season to spend more time with her family, which includes husband Jeremy and their three young children.

And now, she's stepping back in, at Lebanon.

"I really missed it," Walborn said by phone Monday evening. "Basketball in general has been a huge part of my life. I (walked away) for the right reasons, I know that; to be with my family and it's not like I regretted it. I just missed it a lot."

So when Brewer stepped down, it was pretty much a no-brainer for Walborn, who already works in the district as a building substitute at Henry Houck Elementary School, to apply to be his successor.

"I was excited," she said. "I definitely thought about it. I took time to think about it. And I talked about it with my husband to make sure the timing was good for us. I was excited because I've been part of the district for the last seven, eight years. I'm familiar with the district as a whole, I know some of the kids and being around the area, I'm familiar with their basketball team."

After back-to-back section titles in 2013-14 and 2014-15, the Cedars struggled to a 5-17 mark this past season due in part to a back injury that limited standout forward Alexis Hill for a good bit of the season.

But Hill and plenty of young talent return next season, so Walborn appears to be stepping into a pretty good situation.

"I'm just looking forward to getting to know them, personally and basketball-wise," she said. "Honestly I don't know a whole lot about them. Since I've been done coaching at Annville, I've never seen them play, so I only know what I've seen from reading articles in the paper. That's about it. So I'm excited about that, just getting to know them through my eyes."

She's equally excited to coach at a school like Lebanon, where basketball is part of the fabric of not only the school itself but the community as a whole.

"That's what I'm excited about, because that's what I know," said Walborn, who shined at Lebanon Catholic under her maiden name Jaime Podjed in the late '90s. "That's kind of how I've been brought up, in that basketball culture, so I'm excited about that. Because I feel like, having gone through that, that's something I have to offer to the program."

Walborn is still working on getting a staff together, but expects to have former Lebanon coach Terri Johnston as her JV coach and is hopeful of meeting with the team sometime in the very near future.

"I'm hoping this week," she said. "Now that it's official, I can get together with them and get our open gyms together and start to figure out what we're doing as far as summer leagues and getting everything figured out."