Summer sports ready to launch

Posted 6/16/14

Chrissy Pascali, a rising senior at Mount St. Joseph Academy, is one of several area players who have embarked on a field hockey tour to the Netherlands. (Photo by Tom Utescher) by Tom Utescher The …

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Summer sports ready to launch

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Chrissy Pascali, a rising senior at Mount St. Joseph Academy, is one of several area players who have embarked on a field hockey tour to the Netherlands. (Photo by Tom Utescher) Chrissy Pascali, a rising senior at Mount St. Joseph Academy, is one of several area players who have embarked on a field hockey tour to the Netherlands. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

The scholastic spring sports season has ended and most schools have officially bid adieu to the Class of 2014, but that doesn’t mean that area athletes will be idle until August. A number of summer basketball leagues are getting underway this week, and some select field hockey players have embarked for the Netherlands.

Making the trip to Holland as part of the Mystx Field Hockey Club team are Katie Fitzpatrick and Chrissy Pascali, both rising seniors at Mount St. Joseph Academy, and Remi Filippini, a rising junior at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy. They’re participating in a festival for scholastic players that is being staged in conjunction with the 2014 International Hockey Federation World Cup.

They were slated to take in at least one of the matches involving the U.S. national team, a squad that includes two Mount St. Joseph grads, sisters Katie (’08) and Julia (’09) Reinprecht. The siblings both played in the 2012 Olympics, and later that year, they helped Princeton University win its first NCAA title in the sport. Their mother, Tina Reinprecht, is the founder of the Mystx organization, and she will be filling in as Mount St. Joe’s coach this fall as Christina Post takes a maternity leave.

Every day at school, Mount St. Joseph students pass by a reproduction of Dutch master Jan Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, and now Pascali and Fitzpatrick have a chance to view the original. Often referred to as the Dutch Mona Lisa, the painting hangs in the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague, the city hosting the World Cup.

Back home, summer league basketball action is getting underway on multiple fronts. As usual, Mount St. Joseph Academy hoopsters will be participating in the Lou Cappiella League in Roxborough. Games will be played on the newly constructed outdoor courts at Kendrick Recreation Center, where the league has traditionally operated under the direction of former Chestnut Hill College and Springside School coach Brian Morris.

A new high school league was started up at Gwynedd Mercy Academy last summer by the school’s incoming coach, Tom Lonergan. He came there directly from Central Bucks East High School, but many years ago he headed the girls’ program at Bishop McDevitt when the Lancers were a Philadelphia Catholic League powerhouse. Germantown Academy’s team got in on the action during the first season of play at Gwynedd last summer, and the Patriots are back again this year.

As usual, a number of former scholastic stars will be playing in the Philadelphia/Suburban Women’s NCAA League at the AAU Renegades facility on the outskirts of Willow Grove. One of the more successful coaches in the league, Mount St. Joe parent Ted Hagedorn, will be piloting a squad that includes two Mounties who graduated at the end of last month. Alex Louin, the Markward Basketball Club’s high school Player of the Year, is getting ready to step up to the next level at Villanova University, and Carlo Monzo, a Penn Charter middle schooler who moved over to the Mount in ninth grade, is headed to Maryland’s Loyola University.

They will play on Hagedorn’s Team Kelly Green, while on Team Maroon, former teammates Michelle Boggs (East Stroudsburg University) and Elana Roadcloud are being reunited. The two played together at the old Cardinal Dougherty until that school closed, then they played for two years at Springside Chestnut Hill, graduating in 2012.

Kiernan McCloskey, a GA graduate who is now a rising sophomore at Lehigh University, is on the roster of Team Orange, which looks to be a formidable outfit. While Division I schools cannot field their own exclusive teams in the league (NCAA rules prohibit it), Division II squads are permitted to play as a unit, so another GA grad, Monica Schacker (’11) will join her Philadelphia University colleagues on Team Black.

Among the other college leagues is one that‘s based at Cabrini College and made up largely of current and former Division III players. Playing here with their Ursinus College teammates will be Mount grad Adrienne Cellucci and SCH alum Gianna Pownall, both rising sophomores. A third classmate and teammate for the Bears is former GA post player Angela Upright, but she will be out of action this summer as she recovers from knee surgery.

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