SLIPPERY ROCK — Following Amber (McFeely) Osborn’s final game as a member of the Slippery Rock University women’s basketball team, she sought out a man who had helped her so much.

That man was John Tabisz, the former Slippery Rock High girls basketball coach who tried to devise ways to stop her on the basketball court when she was a point guard at Grove City High.

She had a simple message for the man she — and most everyone else — simply called “Tabs.”

“Someday,” she said. “I want to coach with you.”

It was an innocent comment at the time on a late winter day in 2006. Osborn was set to graduate from Slippery Rock University and Tabisz was nearly four-years removed from being the Rockets’ basketball coach.

Neither thought a time would come when Tabisz would be back on the bench again.

That time has come now.

Tabisz, now retired as a teacher at Slippery Rock, has taken over the Rockets’ girls basketball program. His assistant coach? Amber (McFeely) Osborn, of course.

“It’s very exciting,” Osborn said. “I kept running into Coach Tabisz at the grocery store. I was pregnant and he said he was thinking about applying for the job at Slippery Rock. He said, ‘If I do, do you want to be my assistant?’ And I said, ‘Heck, yeah!’”

Osborn was ready to get back into the game after the birth of her fourth child, Jude, in September.

Her other children are Madison, 4, Kyle, 3, and Briella, 2.

Osborn said Tabisz has made it easy for her to juggle her hectic home life with her new basketball life.

“He’s so understanding of me having kids and a family. The important stuff,” she said. “I couldn’t be with anyone better.”

Osborn said she owed a lot to Tabisz, who helped her get a scholarship to play at Slippery Rock University.

“He went over to coach (Laurel) Heilman and said, ‘If you don’t take her, someone else will,’” Osborn said. “Her initial response was I was too small, but he kept pushing me. If it wasn’t for him, I never would have gotten a chance to play there. He’s my buddy.”

Osborn is taking what she has learned at Grove City and at Slippery Rock University and is molding a defense, leaving Tabisz to focus on the offense and adjusting to life as a coach after 11 years away.

Tabisz took over for Christin Miller, who spent the last two seasons as the coach after she was hired to replace Adrienne Orris.

“There were so many negative comments when I took (the job),” Tabisz said. “Like, ‘Kids can’t play for you’ because I’m old-school. But the kids are very adaptable. They have adapted very well. It’s been tough on them. They’ve had three different people coaching them in four years.”

Ultimately, though, Tabisz said the game on the court really hasn’t changed all that much in his absence.

Tabisz has stayed close to the game, conducting private lessons and watching a lot of basketball around Butler County.

“It’s still fundamentals,” Tabisz said.

Another advantage Tabisz has is the familiarity with his players.

As a teacher, he had many of his current players in class — as well as several of their parents.

“They knew me,” Tabisz said, smiling. “And none of my former players were around to tell them how horrible I was.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better reception from them,” he added.

Tabisz never thinks much beyond the year in which he is coaching.

It’s a defense mechanism he has learned first-hand and from observation.

“Like I told the kids, ‘Every year I coach, I expect to get fired at the end of the year,’” Tabisz said. “The kids laughed, but it’s the way society is. I enjoy this year and worry about next year later.”

And he’s certainly enjoying it now, and even more with Osborn at his side.

“I am having such a good time,” Tabisz said. “It helps that I am retired from teaching and have all afternoon to prepare. The energy is there.”