How Saint Joseph’s Catholic’s girls basketball team beat the odds with return to court
The Lady Wolfpack entered into Bald Eagle’s gym, thrilled and prepped to play a basketball game on Dec. 6.
It wasn’t just any basketball game.
The Saint Joseph’s Catholic Academy girls basketball team hadn’t played a competitive, PIAA-sanctioned contest since March 4, 2021. Without a ton of time to practice, Saint Joseph’s Catholic lost 39-16 to Bald Eagle. It was just the beginning of the season for a team that sits with an 0-5 record.
Basketball isn’t all about winning for the Saint Joseph’s Catholic girls. It’s about bonding and moving toward a cause that they feel is bigger than themselves.
“Sometimes it’s hard, but in the end, I know that we’re just building the team,” first-year forward Aubrey Yartz said. “As I move on in high school, we’ll get better. I’m excited.”
Yartz is just one of the many newcomers to the Lady Wolfpack. Saint Joseph’s Catholic girls basketball had just four girls on the roster weeks before the season started. The team was incredibly close to watching another year go by with no games to show for it.
The number of high school student-athletes nationwide during the 2021-22 school year sat at a little more than 7.6 million, which is a 4% drop from the 2018-19 school year, per Education Week. When the COVID-19 pandemic happened, participation rates in all sports dropped at Saint Joseph’s Catholic as well with girls sports getting hit even harder. Some girls soccer players have joined the boys soccer team for two seasons in a row, softball hasn’t fielded a team in the same amount of years and girls basketball is just getting back on its feet.
Not having girls basketball last season was “disappointing,” in the words of athletic director Justin Rodkey. However, it was “encouraging” to see the program rise from the ashes like a phoenix.
“People wanted to be successful,” Rodkey said. “They know it’s going to be a growing season, but they’re in it. They’re having fun, they’ve learned a lot in the few weeks that they’ve been together and it’s exciting to see them on the court.”
Making the band
Head coach Bethany Irwin joined the program before the season started and assisted the girls in their training. She observed them, then immediately went into the fundamentals. Many of the players found themselves dribbling a basketball for the first time in their lives. A few of them had never even watched a basketball game.
It was an eye-opening experience for Irwin, who led State College’s girls program for 23 seasons, guiding her teams to a 399-187 record. She admired the players for doing something that was so alien to them and to try something new.
Irwin was “thankful” and happy for the opportunity.
“Right now we’re really just focusing on the aspects of the game,” Irwin said after the team’s first game of the season. “Some of them didn’t even know offensive and defensive things. We’re really talking about basic, transitional aspects of the game. I’m not trying to make light of a situation — these kids came out and know nothing of this game. There’s so much to try to teach, but I really admire the fact that they came out.”
Kelsey Prospero was among the group of players who continued to practice under former head coach Katie Glusko Sosnoskie. The junior didn’t have a lot of experience heading into her sophomore year, playing sparingly on the junior varsity team. A year without competitive basketball was a big jump for her to varsity. She also became a leader.
Seniors Ava Calistri, Brandi Carmack and Kita Chappell joined the team with her. Then, a number of others came on board including first-year players Maria Straub, Monika Peters and Yartz, sophomore Sara McElhinny and junior Katie Pase.
“It was really cool because in the beginning, I wasn’t even one of the first people there because I had to work and I was trying to figure out my schedule,” Prospero said. “In the beginning we had four players and didn’t even know if we were going to field a team. Bethany said that even if we weren’t going to (have enough) we were going to practice five days a week. She really wanted to get us started to get a team and get the program started. I think that’s really awesome.”
Pase played baseball in the spring due to softball not fielding a team. She swapped out her catcher’s mitt for an outfielder’s glove and impressed her teammates and coaching staff with leadership. Seeing another girls team on the brink of losing its season, Pase jumped into action on the court to aid her “sisters” in blazing a trail.
While her team currently sits winless on the year, Pase is excited to continue to grow with her new teammates.
“It’s really awesome and it’s a lot of fun because it gives a lot of opportunities for other girls in their other sports,” Pase said. ”The energy is really awesome. Coach Bethany brings an awesome energy and we all just build off each other. That’s what makes it so much fun because no matter how bad we do or how down we get on ourselves, we build each other up. We think it’s really important to have that.”
Saint Joseph’s Catholic is set to play its next game on the road against West Branch on Jan. 3 at 6:30 p.m.
