August 10, 2006 Issue                                       

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Area hoopsters stand out at AAU Nationals
by TOM UTESCHER

The Philadelphia Belles’ 15-and-Under Team, AAU national runner-up. In the front row are Springside’s Katie Rutan (#40) and Germantown Academy’s Jesse Carey (#3); in the back row, second from left, is Sarah McGorry of Mount St. Joseph Academy. The team was coached by Kevin Lynch (left rear) and by Joe Westerfer (right rear), who played college ball locally at Spring Garden College.

Last month a number of area basketball players headed south, traveling with their respective club teams to locations in Louisiana and Florida to take part in the AAU National championships.

The Philadelphia Belles, who recently began operating out of Springside’s new Vare Field House, saw their 15-and-under team finish second in the nation at their tourney Monroe, LA. On the roster were Katie Rutan, a shooting guard who’ll enter Springside next month as a sophomore, Jesse Carey, a sophomore point guard from Germantown Academy, and Mount St. Joseph Academy junior Sarah McGorry, who plays at forward.

Another Springsider, freshman guard Kristen Fuery, played for the Belles’ 14’s, who reached the quarterfinal round at their national tourney in Lafayette, LA. Caroline Doty, a junior guard from Germantown Academy, played a major role in the success of the Fencor club’s 16-and-under team, which played in Orlando, FL and emerged as the national runner-up in its age group.

The Belles 15-year-old team that included Carey, McGorry, and Rutan won its pool in the qualifying round to earn a bye in the first round of the championship draw. It was familiar ground for Carey and Rutan, who used to play for a Fencor team that finished fourth in the country in 2004 and came in third last year.

“I felt that I was really well-prepared this year,” noted Rutan. “I was in good shape, and I shot pretty well overall.”

Laura Johnson, a Mount St. Joe junior, was also at the tourney as part of the Comets team. Her squad advanced out of pool play and then won in the opening round of the main bracket, but the Comets lost in their next outing to the eventual champion, Cincinnati’s Finest.

Moving up through the other side of the bracket, the Belles had only one close encounter, a 59-56 decision over another Middle Atlantic region club, the DBL Phoenix. They reached the championship game with a lopsided semifinal victory, beating a team from Minnesota, 71-42.

In the finals, McGorry related, “We got down by ten early, then after we got back into the game it was sort of back-and-forth the rest of the way.”

The Belles were down by six at the intermission, then they forged ahead by as many as five points in the second half. The game was tied 51-all, but Cincinnati hit what would be the gamewinning field goal with just six seconds to go.

“We had to go the length of the floor to try and get a shot,” Carey recalled. “They played smart, because they had fouls to give, and they fouled us to take more time off the clock, so we wound up losing by two.”

Doty and her Fencor teammates were no strangers to the AAU tournament. The core players on the squad won the national championship in 2002, 2004 and 2005, and finished second in 2003. This year, though, an ankle injury to 6’5” star center Elena Delle Donne reduced an already sparse roster to just seven players.

“We really came together because we knew we all had to step up to try to fill in for Elena,” Doty remarked.

In early July, the team headed west for Nike’s End of the Oregon Trail Tournament. Fencor won one of the four major brackets (Doty was named the MVP out of this grouping), then won its semifinal game before falling to the California Swish in the overall championship bout. The girls then flew directly to Orlando for the start of the AAU nationals; by the end of that event, they would have played 18 games against top competition in the space of 12 days.

“It was hard,” Doty recalled, “because out in Oregon the games were played in 24-minute halves, and sometimes I ended up playing the entire game.”

In Florida, Fencor won its pool and began to work its way through the main draw, winning all but one of its early-round games by double digits. In the semifinals they posted a nine-point victory over the Kenner (LA) Angels, the team they’d beaten in the 2004 championship game. In the 2006 final they had to face the hometown favorites, the Orlando Comets, led by 6’4” Krystal Thomas, a rising senior who’s already committed to Duke.

The well-populated Comets cheering section was not disappointed as the Floridians knocked off Fencor, 71-65. Thomas registered 14 points and 14 rebounds for the winners, but Doty put up a game-high 24 points.

Fencor coach Veronica Algeo, who is the aunt of Chestnut Hill College coach Jackie deMarteleire, had high praise for her star guard.

“When Caroline’s on her game, she is clearly one of the most complete guards in the country,” she stated. “She has great court awareness and vision, and an outstanding basketball IQ. She reads what the defense is giving her, and knows when to push the tempo and when to slow up and settle things down.”

Doty observed, “With our team having to go into these big tournaments with seven players on pretty short notice, I feel like the summer was a huge success.”

Springside’s Kristen Fuery first played for the Philadelphia Belles in 2005, when her team made an unexpectedly early exit from the national championships. She was pleased to get through to the quarterfinals this time around.

“I think we were much more unified this year,” she said. “We came together and really started playing as a team.”

After earning a spot in the championship draw, the Belles 14’s opened up with two easy wins, then took a 59-51 decision in the round of 16 over a Comets team that included Mount St. Joe sophomore Elle Hagedorn. Their ride ended in the quarters with a 44-39 setback against the New Jersey Crusaders. The teams which finished fifth through eighth were ranked according to their margin of defeat in the quarterfinals, and the Belles ended up in fifth place.

Now taping in just under six feet, Fuery is a former post player who made the switch to guard a year ago.

“I’m feeling more comfortable with that transition this year,” she explained. “I’ve been working hard and I think every aspect of my game has gotten better.”