St. Vincent-St. Mary's girls basketball team weathers injury with camaraderie

Senior Cameron Jones: "Not one person has to score 30 for us to win. Not one person has to get 20 rebounds. We are all going to eat."

Story and photo by Ryan Isley

AKRON, Ohio — For St. Vincent-St. Mary’s girls basketball, the goal is making sure nobody goes hungry.

The program focuses on having multiple payers who can step up when the team needs them instead of having just one or two players who take on the majority of the workload.

The Fighting Irish don’t have a scorer with eye-popping numbers this season, but four players who average at least eight points per game and another who comes in at 6.5 points.

“We know that everyone can eat," STVM senior Cameron Jones said. "Not one person has to score 30 for us to win. Not one person has to get 20 rebounds. We are all going to eat. We are all going to share the ball, and that is one thing we have picked up throughout the season.”

STVM was thankful for that mentality Saturday afternoon in its 62-30 win over Akron Springfield in the Division II sectional final. With leading scorer Annie Watson (10.9 points per game) on the bench due to injury, the Fighting Irish knew what to do.

They relied on everyone else to step up.

Jones and junior guard Jazmin Torres each scored 15 points and freshman Kendal Batchik added 13.

Watson, named honorable mention All-Ohio last season, watched from the bench, but unlike how she would have felt about missing a tournament game in years past, she was comfortable watching her teammates do their thing.

“I like all of my teammates. To me it’s a sisterhood,” Watson said. “I had no worries at all because they were going to come together and get the win — because everybody eats on this team.”

Having multiple players who can step up has been the backbone of this season for STVM.

Coach Carley Whitney loves that even if some of the players are listed at the same position, they all bring something different to the table.

Having players with different attributes who can be the leader in any given game has made the Fighting Irish a tough scout for opponents.

“'You can’t guard it all' is kind of our motto,” Whitney said. “And one thing I love about this team is that if one person is having a bad night, someone else steps up. We always have four girls in the box score minimum, and that is something you can’t scout.”

STVM finished the regular season 16-4 and won 13 of its last 15 games, with both losses coming at the hands of Division I opponents in Magnificat and Archbishop Hoban.

Those teams have both moved on to the district semifinals in their respective Division I tournament brackets, and Hoban has been one of the top-ranked teams in the state all season. The Fighting Irish led for a good part of that game against Hoban before ultimately losing by eight on the road.

“It has taken time to meld this together, and they are peaking at the right time which is wonderful,” Whitney said. “I am excited for them to see what is going to happen.”

One reason it took some time to gel as a team was that the Fighting Irish welcomed in two transfers this season in Jones from Magnificat and Jenna Bycznski from Berea-Midpark. They both play significant minutes for STVM, and Jones’ 9.9 points per game is second on the team.

The team started learning how to play together in the summer before the season began.

“Summer was the building time where we met new people and they learned how we play and how we could play with them," Bycznski said.

Another turning point for STVM from a team-building standpoint was a trip the team made early in the season to Los Angeles, where the girls and boys teams played in the Chosen Ones Invitational at the then-Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena).

The STVM girls came away with a 66-17 win over Fairfax (California) and a lesson in playing as a team.

“When we played down in L.A., that’s when we started playing together and became one,” Bycznski said.

But those games in the regular season don’t matter now that the tournament has begun.

Whitney views the regular season as a “bunch of little quizzes to get you prepared for the big test.” That’s why she tries to schedule tough games such as Magnificat and Hoban, so the players know what to expect when the games start to matter.

“With all due respect, when I say the regular season is just prep, it’s just prep,” Whitney said. “We build our schedule that way, so they are prepared for a postseason run. They are battle-tested. That’s how I feel. We put people on our schedule so that when it comes to adversity in the playoffs, they are used to it.”

She also realizes that talent and skill aren't the only elements needed to make a deep run in the OHSAA tournament. It takes unity as a team, and you need some bounces to go your way.

“It takes a whole lot of togetherness and a little bit of luck,” Whitney said. “They have to trust each other, and they have to trust us, and then they have to act on it. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t play together, you are just a bunch of people wearing the same uniform.”

Through 21 games, it seems as though the Fighting Irish have taken that to heart.

Not only have they come together as a team on the court, but they have become one when it comes to tuning out the detractors. That is evidenced by looking at the back of their warmup shirts, which across the back read “Matthew 12:30.”

In the Bible, Matthew 12:30 states, “Whoever is not with me is against me.”

“We have haters everywhere,” Watson said. “If you’re not with us, we don’t need you.”