December 4, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

GA and Mount meet in hoops tune-up
by TOM UTESCHER

GA’s Monica Schacker (right) tries to pry the ball away from the Mount’s Mary Jo Horgan. GA’s Jesse Carey is in the background.

An early season basketball scrimmage last Tuesday afternoon featured a pair of defending league champions whose circumstances differed as they entered the 2008-2009 campaign.

The host of last week’s practice bout, Germantown Academy, has won the Girls’ Inter-Ac League championship for 10 years in a row, and the Patriots have almost everyone from last year’s roster back this season.

By contrast, Mount St. Joseph Academy, two-time titlist in the Athletic Association of Catholic Academies and the defending PIAA Class AAA State Champion, graduated five of its top seven players. Three of them were starters: forward Sarah McGorry (Lafayette College) and guards Ryann Gallagher (Catholic University), and Laura Johnson (Princeton).

With the Patriots also having started practice a week earlier than the Magic (GA is not a member of the PIAA, which pushed back the starting date for winter sports activity by one week this year), it wasn’t a surprise when Germantown felled the Mount, 70-47, in a scrimmage consisting of five eight-minute periods (with some on-court coaching interludes).

Star junior guard Maggie Lucas, who has already made a verbal commitment to attend Penn State, struck from inside and outside to accumulate 27 points. Villanova prospect Jesse Carey ran the show at point guard for the Patriots, who received 10 points from sophomore guard Monica Schacker, eight from junior forward Tory Thierolf, and six from senior center Meredith Carber.

Steph Smith of Mount St. Joseph (left) battles GA’s Tory Thierolf for position under the backboard.

Carey is a team co-captain this winter along with classmate and fellow guard Jess Erb, and another senior veteran is forward Laura Karbach, a water polo standout who has committed to play that sport at Wagner College on Staten Island.

GA would’ve been a truly dominant squad last winter if not for an injury to Caroline Doty, a 5-foot-10-inch guard who is now a freshman at the University of Connecticut. A torn knee ligament suffered during the 2007 soccer season caused GA to lose the services of the All-American a year early. The only other senior on last year’s roster was 6-foot power forward Bri Cowden, a member of the team at Trinity College (Conn.) this winter.

Doty still made her imprint on last year’s team, proving to be a vocal presence on the GA bench while serving as an unofficial assistant coach.

“This season, this group will really develop their own identity,” noted assistant coach Terry Rakowski. “I think last year it took us most of the season to realize that Caroline wasn’t going to jump up off the bench and come into the game.”

Unfortunately, Germantown is currently dealing with another knee injury. Sophomore Alexa Gallagher, a 5-foot-11-inch guard, had ACL surgery over the summer, and is rehabbing diligently to see if she might be able to return to action later in the season.

Other underclassmen on the Patriots’ roster include varsity veteran Dana Lotito, a sophomore forward, and junior guard Maggie Ebbott, who played JV and saw some varsity action last winter. Freshmen Jaryn Garner (guard) and Sarah Armstrong (forward) have also earned spots on the GA varsity.

For last week’s scrimmage, Coach Rakowski remarked, “We thought the intensity was good, particularly on the offensive and defensive transition.”

When the coaching staff examined the previous season, he explained, “One thing that we saw was that we were beaten on the transition too many times. We’re emphasizing that if we can make the other team really earn every basket, we’re going to be in just about every game.”

Mount St. Joseph also likes to run the floor and play pressure defense, but the Magic have to prepare a number of new starters and key bench players for the task. The two returning starters are point guard Jen Sabia and versatile swing player Elle Hagedorn. Hagedorn, who has received a “likely letter” from the admissions department at Harvard University, led the Mounties in last week’s scrimmage with 15 points.

The Magic’s total also included eight points from sophomore guard Mary Jo Horgan, seven points from senior forward Meg Rothwell, and six from sophomore forward Steph Smith. Horgan and Smith played in both JV and varsity games last winter, but Rothwell did not play basketball at all. Two other current seniors, forward Shannon Bridges and guard Maureen Gribb, were full-time members of the varsity last winter, as was then-sophomore Colleen Caldwell, a guard who transferred from the Mount to Springside School over the summer. Sophomore forward Megan Black, a JV player as a freshman, has moved up to the first string this season.

MSJ head coach John Miller wasn’t pleased with the new, later starting date imposed by the PIAA, noting that after two days of tryouts, the Magic had only practiced for five days before their jaunt to GA.

“Obviously, GA is very talented, but they’ve also been out a little longer than us,” he said. “We haven’t even gone full court in practice yet, and we haven’t even looked at a zone or a trap at this point in time. We’re not going to be able to handle right away a hard, aggressive zone trap like GA was playing.”

On a positive note, Miller said, “We played hard and we didn’t back down, and I think that 95 percent of our shots were good shots. In our set offense we were able to get good shots against them, although not enough of them went in the basket. That’s going to improve with practice.”

Coming back to the shortened preseason, Miller noted, “There are a lot of things we need to put in before our first game. I question how prepared coaches can get their teams to be in such a short period of time, and if you look at our schedule, we’re playing 10 games or so in the month of December.

“It wouldn’t have affected us as much last year when we had everybody back,” he continued, “but it’s different when you’re breaking in new people and introducing new things.”