“We are going to hit the ground running in 2020,” St. Ed’s girls basketball head coach David Rogers said while anticipating a new calendar year. Unfortunately, his team was not immediately able to fire on all cylinders.
Senior standout Elise Mallon was sidelined for the past month with a hand injury. The team missed her leadership, ball-handling prowess, and 9.4 scoring average as the go-to point and shooting guard. She is expected to return any day now and provide a needed shot in the arm as the stretch run includes two postseason tournaments.
The Pirates were able to persevere admirably during her absence, reaching 6-5 overall following a win and loss on consecutive nights to usher in 2020 last week.
For the first time in the brief history of St. Ed’s D5 Alive holiday tournament – in memory of the late basketball star Darell Flowers – the girls hosted a four-team field. Alexa Soderman scored 17 points twice, and Zion Atwater averaged 11 as the Pirates broke even. The duo accounted for 31 total rebounds in two contests.
Scheduling games during the holiday break was a completely new adventure for the girls, but it supports an innovation that Rogers sees as vital to an overall upgrade in the quality of the program.
“Some were not really excited when I told them about playing two games over the Christmas break,” Rogers told us. “But we lined everything up and gave them some time off to travel or be with family. A couple that were traveling came back specifically for the tournament. I believe the team was jacked up for the possibility of becoming the first winners on the girls side of the D5 Alive tournament.”
St. Ed’s reached the championship game, where a 17-1 third-quarter flameout proved decisive in a 50-37 loss to Atlantic Christian.
Atwater, the only other senior, shares the leadership role as co-captain with Mallon. She is second on the team in scoring and rebounding with averages of 10.8 and 6.4, respectively. Soderman, a sophomore, is all over the stat sheet again, just as she was in volleyball. She tops everyone with 11.2 points and 9.9 boards per game. Call it averaging a double-double.
One favorable aspect for St. Ed’s thus far is home cooking. The 6-5 record of breaks down to 6-1 at home, 0-4 on the road.
“The season started well and then we hit a couple of hurdles, as every team does,” Rogers said. “I’ve known our seniors since they played for the middle school, and we have good leadership. So far I’m pretty pleased with the way the team has played. We just need to improve in some areas, but I’m happy with the path we are on.”
The original starting five included sophomore Izzy Jennings and freshman Jayla Brown. In recent weeks it became a matter of incorporating the rest of the nine-person squad – featuring sophomore Karis Crookshank and three freshmen, Lauren Chesley, Kate Kedem and Imani Williams.
“With our five starters we have a pretty tall lineup,” Rogers said. “Elise Mallon directs the offense, but even without her our ball-handling is pretty good. But I would say that every team could improve in that area. It never quite meets the standards coaches would prefer, but we have definitely improved from what I saw last year.
“I don’t have any juniors, which is OK. I would like to have some juniors to step into those leadership roles next year because I don’t think you ever truly replace players like Zion Atwater and Elise Mallon. But we have a pretty good young team this year, and we have a good nucleus of players in the middle school.”
Neumann Marlett, a former varsity girls head coach at St. Ed’s for two seasons (2010-11 and 2011-12), assists Rogers on the bench, as he did last season. The pair brings a great deal of coaching experience to a task almost identical to what they worked on a season ago.
Atwater, Mallon and Soderman accounted for the bulk of the scoring back then, and this year the trio is again accounting for well over 90 percent of the point production. Developing and blending in the supporting cast is once again a season-long priority.
The team would like to have Mallon back at full strength for the SSAC tournament later this month, and for the FHSAA district tournament in early February.
“One of my goals was to get the program back into a district,” Rogers said of the decision to graduate from independent status. “The idea was to hopefully raise the level of our girls play, with the district being higher quality basketball.”
