Athletes of the Week - Julian And Brooklin

The widget girls played St Pius 3rd grade the last game before Christmas, and rolled to their second win of the season, evening their record, and matching their win total from all of last year. Previously this year, 4th graders Madi and Mia have won Athlete of the Week, and now another 4th grade girl wins the honor. Brooklin is an excellent all-around athlete. She can throw the football almost as well as any of the boys in the class, is consistently the best or one of the best at any sport we play in P.E., is an excellent volleyball player, and more to the point in the winter, she’s a rapidly improving basketball player. She is fast, gets lots of steals and loose balls, blocks shots, and against St Pius, she scored a career high 12 points. With Brook, Madi, and Mia playing both basketball and volleyball, the future looks bright for the St Rose girls’ programs going forward.

Our varsity boys division 1 team got off to a great start to the year, winning the Blessed Sacrament pre-season tournament. We then played Notre Dame, and sailed to a victory, continuing our momentum. Then, reality set in. We had back to back games against St Mary’s and Nativity, and although we were in both games, we ended up losing both by about 10 points. Therefore, we headed into the last week before Christmas with a 1-2 league record. On Tuesday, we played St Vincent de Paul on the road. We had previously beaten SVDP in the championship game of the Blessed Sacrament tournament by 22, but it was a 6 point game mid 4th quarter before we finally ran away. We were confident going into this game, but SVDP has 2 6 footers, one of who is a very capable left-handed scorer. Tall teams have given us lots of problems in the past, but we were able to play at our pace (fast) and stretched out to a double digit lead by halftime. Aaron played a great all-around game, and Mario came off the bench to tie his career high with 8 points, but the player who drew the most attention from the defense again was Julian. Julian is a tremendous all-around athlete, and although soccer is his main sport, he has tons of talent in basketball, and his skills are improving all the time. Julian really shined in our next game against Good Shepherd. We got off to a 10-0 start, and although I still thought they looked dangerous, I think everyone relaxed and assumed we were fine. We weren’t. By half, we were down 20-16. Then disaster struck. Every shot we took rimmed out, and every shot they took found the bottom. More importantly though, we gave up. We were shell-shocked, we were bickering, we were unaware, and we had the worst quarter of basketball I’ve been associated with in my life. At the end of 3, we found ourselves in a 43-18 hole. With 6 minutes left, there was no chance we were going to come back and win, but I challenged the team to show some fight, show some pride, and come back out and compete as hard as possible for 6 minutes. During the 4th quarter, Julian’s leadership came through more than I’ve ever seen it before. He scored 13 points in the game to bring his season total to 71, but way more importantly, he didn’t give up. He was vocal, he dived all over the floor, he fought for rebounds, he took the ball to the basket with abandon, and with his team falling apart around him, he showed leadership qualities to match his athletic qualities, and this will serve him and us very well going forward in the new year.