By Joseph Staszewski
The horn blew and Amani Tatum slumped over, hands at her knees, head down. The Archbishop Molloy senior guard had fouled out of her final high school game with her team seconds away from ending its season.
“Hard,” Tatum, a four-year varsity player headed to James Madison, said of the moment. “A chapter in your life is closing and a new one is opening. It was kind of bittersweet.”
A 62-48 loss to Bishop Ford in the CHSAA Class AA girls’ basketball semifinals at St. John Villa Friday closed the book on Tatum’s high school career as well as those of seven of her fellow seniors.
For the second-straight year, the Stanners fell two wins short of earning the school’s first-ever trip to the state Federation tournament A, the highest classification.
But none of that takes away from what they accomplished during their time at Molloy, including a state Federation Class A crown as sophomores and the school’s first Brooklyn/Queens regular season title this year, players said.
“We should be proud of that,” Columbia-bound forward Carolyn Gallagher said. “This is one of the best leagues in the country. We should be very proud of what we did.”
One thing that will linger is that the Stanners (21-8) didn’t have their best performance in the season’s final game. There were uncharacteristic turnovers and too many makeable shots missed. It was the team’s third loss to the Falcons in five meetings this season. Molloy Coach Scott Lagas credited Ford’s athleticism and tenaciousness on defense to preventing his team from accomplishing what they wanted to do.
“We missed a lot of shots and a lot of it was because of the intensity of their defense,” Lagas said. “Could we have played better? Yeah. It’s tough.”
Ford (23-7) took control of the game with a 9-2 run to end the first half that gave it a 38-30 lead. Consecutive three-pointers from Jill Conroy (14 points) ballooned the lead to 53-37 with 6:07 remaining in the game. The Stanners had kept the Falcons’ shooters at bay up until that point.
“Those were two big-time shots,” Tatum said.
She and Gallagher each scored 17 points each and Nyasha Irizarry added seven for Molloy. Aaliyah Jones paced the Falcons with 20 points and Aaliyah Lewis added 11.
Gallagher said it was hard to think back on all she and her classmates, such as Alexa “Weazel” Dietrich and Patti Dorgler, accomplished together. What wasn’t difficult was expressing what she felt for them.
“They are all my great friends,” Gallagher said. “I will always have these memories.”
