Editor’s note: Addy Sipkin plays for Sacred Heart, which won the Class A NEPSAC girls championship on Sunday. She is a guest author for New England Basketball Journal.
Have you ever had to step into big shoes? Well, let me tell you about how it happened to me, a freshman recruit walking into a program holding back-to-back FAA titles, coached by renowned NEPSAC Class A Coach of the Year Ayo Hart.
Four seasoned upperclassmen would be returning to the starting five, but their point guard, Oushy Salem Hassan, had just left to play for the University of Arkansas, and I was about to step into the fire to be their freshman point guard.
The team quickly welcomed me to the Sacred Heart family. Within minutes of the first practice, it was clear this program was like nothing I had experienced, and I had to step up my game. Coach Hart runs a tight ship, and there were plays for me to master, reps to tirelessly work at and an expectation of excellence, hard work, and team love. As we began to play, I felt the possibility of magic immediately. We were an exceptional team.
READ MORE: Sacred Heart's Class A championship win | NEPSAC All-Tournament teams
Our first game against Hotchkiss, it all seemed so easy with a 72-30 win. We just barreled through the competition. I didn’t score much in that game, but no one seemed to mind. My team kept making sure I knew how important I was to the win, and how all of my other contributions were helping us – rebounds, assists, steals, playmaking. They showed me this was team basketball and I was quickly getting the message. The second game was even better. I found my shooting rhythm and put up some major numbers, and we handily beat Greenwich Country Day School 72-48 — a team we had nearly lost to the previous season.
It was an incredible high. Then … everything changed in an instant.
The injury bug came for us, and our first core player went down right before the Nickerson tournament in December where we were slated to face top-level competition. During our first tournament game, two more key players went down with injuries, and now it felt like we were up against insurmountable odds. We were beaten badly by Tilton and Kimball Union, and it stung. This was definitely the low point of the season.
However, looking back at this moment, it was a crucial turning point that reinforced our understanding of what it meant to be a championship team. We learned that every single player on the team is of the utmost importance and needs to be prepared to step up at any given moment. Our mantra — “all in” — suddenly took on a literal meaning, and we had to fully buy into it. It certainly helped that our captains, Eva Wilkerson, Ava Curto, and Emma Mathews, were experienced upperclassmen who led the way for our young team.
We finished with a record of 15-7 and earned a berth in the Fairchester Athletic Association playoffs as the second seed. We were heading into our first playoff game with a healthy team once again, and we felt like the powerful force we once were, with an added component of chemistry that had reached an all-time high. What I didn’t yet know was that when I least expected it…the injury plague that I had evaded all season was about to come for me at the most inopportune time.
Ironically it was during the team’s best game of the season against a tough Green Farms Academy team, when we scored a school record of 90 points and I had my personal best performance (20 points, nine rebounds and five assists), that I took an inadvertent elbow to the head. I fought through the pain as long as I could, but I soon learned that I would be sidelined for the first time all season — as we entered the NEPSAC playoffs as a No. 2 seed.
Although devastating, I knew the team I had helped carry through injuries all season would now carry me when I needed it most. We could not be more prepared, because we had been in this very position before, and truth be told, I did not have a doubt in my mind that we would walk away victorious.
I screamed my head off from the sidelines, watched the entire team step up, and observed Coach Hart work her magic during the final against Loomis Chaffee. And we did it! We won the NEPSAC Class A championship for the first time in school history.
It was the hardest, longest, most exciting and excruciating winter of my life. But my head has healed, my heart is full, and I can’t wait to do it all over again next year. Coaches constantly talk about learning to play like a team, but we didn’t just learn it, we lived it.
