FOX CHAPEL — Just before coaching her 500th career victory in the WPIAL, second-year Shady Side Academy girls basketball coach Jonna Burke received some unexpected company.

Players on her Butler teams from more than 20 years ago showed up in the gym to join her in the celebration.

“I was surprised ... happily surprised,” Burke said. “We had something very special back then, a real bond. More than wins and losses in coaching, I care about relationships. Those girls I coached back then, I was growing up with those kids. I was only a few years older than they were.

“Now I’m proud to call them my friends. I’m excited every time I get invited to somebody’s wedding, hear about them having kids playing basketball now, get together for lunch whenever someone’s in town, that’s what it’s about for me.”

Winning has been quite a by-product for Burke in that regard.

Shady Side’s 66-34 home victory over Apollo-Ridge not only marked her 500th win against only 209 losses, it improved her team to 8-1 on the season and was its fifth straight victory. Shady Side won only one game two years ago.

Burke was 360-105 in 18 years at her alma mater, Bethel Park, reaching the WPIAL title game four times, winning the district championship in 2013. She never had a losing season with the Black Hawks and her teams made the WPIAL playoffs every year.

That’s a far cry from her debut coaching season in 1995-96 as a 22-year-old head coach at Butler.

“I’m so excited and thrilled that she got to 500 wins,” said Adrianne (Vodenichar) Thompson, a freshman on that 1995-96 Golden Tornado squad. “I wasn’t sure we were gonna get to five.”

“But Coach Burke stuck with us and we stuck with her. We believed in each other and made it happen.”

Butler finished 5-19 in Burke’s initial season. Victory No. 1 was a 56-46 triumph over host Franklin Regional during a Christmas holiday tournament.

“No. never,” Burke said of whether she thought she’d ever see 500 wins. “I didn’t know what I was doing back then. I kept trying different things. But I loved those girls because they kept working hard. All they wanted to do was win.”

Burke wound up with a record of 123-91 in eight years at Butler. She built the Golden Tornado into a consistent WPIAL playoff program before leaving.

“An opportunity to return to my alma mater was the only job that made me leave Butler,” Burke said. “I was staying otherwise.”

She almost never got to Butler in the first place.

Averaging 25 points and 12 rebounds per game as a senior at Bethel Park, Jonna Huemrich was heavily recruited and wound up putting together a stellar career at the University of Pittsburgh, scoring 1,807 points and grabbing 954 rebounds.

She considered starting a professional career overseas.

“I was looking at Luxembourg pretty seriously,” she said. “But if I went over there, I felt like I’d be putting my life on hold. I wanted to finish my education degree at Pitt and that was a five-year program. Besides, one of the reasons I attended Pitt was I didn’t want to stray far from home.

“Then the assistant coaching position opened at Bethel, so I stuck around.”

Thompson, Burke’s first four-year player at Butler, is glad she did.

“She impacted my life,” Thompson said. “Such a caring person. Our first year looked so bleak, but there was a comfort zone the players felt with her. Jonna not only had a passion for basketball and the ability to teach it, she was so genuine. She cared about us as people. That really came across.

“She came to my wedding in North Carolina. She never forgets you.”

Still living at her parents’ house as an assistant coach at Bethel Park, Burke recalled perusing the newspaper want ads every day.

“I was anxious to get out on my own, begin my own life,” she recalled. “I was sitting by the pool and saw an ad that Butler was looking for a head coach. Jim Knapp was the head coach at Bethel at the time and he knew (Butler administrator) Jerry Slamecka. He told me to go for it.

“I never thought I’d get that job,. I was 22. I wanted the experience of going through the interview process. It was intimidating ... being in a room with 11 board members firing questions at me. I thought I did well, but I was so young, I never thought I’d get a second interview.

“Next thing I knew, I was headed to Butler. I cherish those years. I grew up a lot there.”

Seneca Valley coach Dorothea Epps was on Burke’s staff at Butler and eventually succeeded her as head coach there.

“She’s my dog,” Epps said, grinning. “I love her. Jonna learned how to coach on the job. Everybody does. She made mistakes and she learned from them.

“Now she’s one of the best coaches in the WPIAL, if not the state. She knows how to build players’ confidence and maximize abilities.”

Burke joins North Catholic’s Molly Rottmann, Mars’ Dana Petruska, Neshannock’s LuAnn Grybowski and Chartiers Valley’s Tim McConnell (now boys coach) as active 500-win girls basketball coaches in the WPIAL.

“She coaches well. She’s an even better person, a friend for life,” Epps said.

Burke firmly believes in the latter.

“The coaching is temporary with each group of kids tat comes through,” she said. “The relationships are forever.”